Young War - Darker Love

The last time we featured Young War we suggested he’d gone a bit Chet Faker in his sound, giving it a hip grinding, lip blushing, cheek flushing vibe, even if the lyrics of Black Diamond weren’t exactly about removing underwear and seeking pleasures of the sensual type.

Now he’s continuing that path with another new song called Darker Love, which has been produced by Pablo Nouvelle, who was also responsible for a remix of Young War’s Rose Gold. Here the music is slinky and sophisticated with looped guitars mixing with light beats to create a warm and hypnotising groove. 

Darker Love gives an immediate clue to the lyrics and this one sounds like things are pretty complicated. “You remind me of a love I used to know,” he sings at one point. “I want to see you in the darkness, I want to turn out all the lights, I want to swim in all the sadness, I want to drown in all your lies,” he adds. This is all after he’s opened the song by asking someone to come closer to his heart, close enough that they can “tear it apart.” It’s certainly not all uncomplicated sunrises, flowers, champagne and chocolates, but then that’s just the stuff of teen romance isn’t it? This one is a bit deeper. It's full of being ready to be hurt.

Young War - Darker Love

Young War - Black Diamond

Ooooh, Young War’s gone all kind of Chet Faker; oozing it up with a slow motion, softly sung organ led piece of soul / r 'n' b, quite possibly smoothing the way for a few babies to be made during or after playing. That is unless you listen to the lyrics, which don’t really say ‘let’s get it on.’ Because the words are about lies and the death of love rather than the sweaty, sticky, flushed face start or middle part of relationships. No, this one is all about the end. Shame, because bang goes the latest track on the 'Breaking More Waves Gets Down And Dirty' compilation then.

Rather like Public Service Broadcasting (although completely different in terms of musical genre) Young War takes an old fashioned vocal sample to embellish the track further. It's from Rev. A. W. Nix (who was known as one of the great singing preachers) about the Black Diamond, a passenger train that ran from New York to Buffalo from 1896 until 1959. We’ve no idea what this has to do with the lyrics of the rest of the song, but it all sounds good together, so frankly who cares?

It's available to download for free.

Young War - Black Diamond

Young War - Rose Gold (Pablo Nouvelle Remix)

If there’s one thing that doesn’t generally work it’s the remix of an acoustic based artist. With very few exceptions the drum n bass rework of your favourite folk act or the dubstep DJ mash up of a traditional singer songwriter’s song is (with the odd exception) the musical equivalent of challenging Usain Bolt to a sprint race and the loser giving all his possessions to the other. Eg: A very bad idea that shouldn’t have even been entertained.

Whilst Manchester based recording artist Young War isn’t a fully acoustic act, his tunes have a very natural and soulful feel (think along the lines of Michael Kiwanuka perhaps) and that means that the tunes don’t scream ‘come and remix the f*ck out of me’.  They don’t even whisper it, which if they did would have least sounded sexier than yelling. Luckily the choice of chilled r’n’b / indie / pop musician Pablo Nouvelle as a remixer of Rose Gold makes a lot of sense. There’s no attempt here to create a banger, no talk of waiting for the drop or layering the song with thousands of bat shit mental beats. Instead Pablo keeps the soul intact and makes everything smooth, mellow and creamy, which rather sounds like he’s created an advert for a chocolate bar or a bottle of Baileys. Either way it’s rather delicious.

The remix of Rose Gold is free to download. 

Young War - Rose Gold (Pablo Nouvelle Remix)

Young War - Rose Gold

A few months ago we streamed the demo of a song called Say That It’s Love by a Manchester's Young War as part of our preview of the Bushstock festival. That song has now evolved into a fully fledged recording together with four other beauties which form his debut EP Rose Gold, exclusively revealed yesterday via Daisy Digital*, one of our new favourite blogs.

If we were going to tag Young War with a genre it would be R&B, but this isn’t the sort of modern electronic R&B that you’ll find all over the blogs right now. This is a warmer, older era form of R&B that has a more acoustic / organic sound that feels instantly familiar. It’s pleasingly soft-pedal and will probably annoy the hell out of all of those people who want their sounds to be edgy and challenging, but if you’re like us and occasionally want the musical equivalent of a warm bath to placate the ears, Young War is it.

Our favourite song on the EP besides Say That It’s Love is the title track Rose Gold; a sad slow groovy relationship crooner that finds Thom Stone (for he is Young War) singing that it’s ‘so hard to watch it die’ but ‘the memories start to fade with time.’ Ah bless, it’ll probably make you want to give him a hug.

Our English teacher told us to never use the word nice, that there were much better words to use. But what’s the point in inventing a word if you’re not going to use it? The sound Young War makes is nice. Who cares what teacher says?

You can download the whole EP from Young War’s Facebook page for a single like. Now that’s what we call a bargain.

Young War - Rose Gold