Young Magic Melts

Young Magic's cover (see above) is an obtuse, out of focus image that's a swirl of a cover. That cover pretty much sums up Melt perfectly; a picture truly is worth a thousand words. The band takes a dizzying array of sounds and somehow, someway, smashes them all together to come up with this warped palette of songs that sound like water colors on acid, a bad dream coming to life, and warping through hyperspace without any oxygen. It's a twisted and a peculiar record that if your not careful will give you a headache.

Melt is exactly as it says a melting pot of instrumentation and ideas that come together in a collision of sounds. At times so annoying you'll want to turn it off (see "Youth With Air,") and at times so beautiful you'll wonder if it's the same band. Young Magic cast all kinds of spells over their songs and the results are a confusing amalgamation of things that don't always make sense. Swirly atmospherics mix alongside raps, driving beats beat down synthetic rhythms, vocals fade in and out and by the end of the thing you're left wondering if what you just listened to wasn't a psychotic episode. This is a trippy record and I'm not really sure how I feel about it. When it's on it, it's on it and Melt is magnificent but when they go off the deep end the record just gets to be too noisy and weird to be any good.

Melt has a ton of great ideas buzzing around it and as much as that's a strength it's also it's weakness as it simply has to much going on for your ears to latch on to anything. This is chillwave that's got an identity crisis. The beats tend to be good, but what envelopes them at times is just too much for your ears to process. With some efficient editing and perhaps some medication for ADHD Youth Magic can cast spells as powerful as Harry Potter but right now they're about as good as a young Neville Longbottom.