For what it is, you can’t say Youth is Only Ever Fun in Retrospect is a particularly bad album, especially being a debut. It’s aimed, with incredible precision, at the ‘indie teen’ market, and does a fine job at doing so – the songs are energetic, the choruses catchy and the production impressive. This group are also, I can attest to, good fun to experience live.
The sticking point I’m afraid is just how inconsequential it all is. There’s nothing fresh, nothing original, nothing surprising offered here. It also ranks rather high on the scale of sameyness. In fact, for the most part this could be genuinely be 45 minutes of the same track, and you do have to be paying attention at many points to note where one ends and the next begins. This would be fine if it was the desired effect, but something tells me this is a more of a symptom of levelling out in the studio, and attempting to crowd the radio-friendly middleground.
One listen, while unlikely to an entirely unenjoyable one, should probably be enough.
benedict tetzlaff - deas. 