It just so happened
that I was listening to early Byrds mere hours before sinking
my teeth into The Young Sinclairs' surprising debut. And,
well, these five Virginians play songs that might have come straight
off of Turn! Turn Turn! or Younger Than Yesterday --
though the vocals here are less iconic (and lower in the mix) and
TheYoung Sinclairs admittedly rev up their guitars a bit
more frequently ("Engineer Man," "Blessed Blackness," etc.). Still,
the jangly, psychedelia-inflected folk is executed with tasty
precision, and the subtly tinny production often approaches a
period-piece-esque accuracy that could fool all but the most attentive
sixties fetishists.
So how about them
songs? Well, there's a reason Kindercore tracked these Roanokeans
(??) down. This lengthy LP -- pieced together from five
self-released CDRs -- is not without its miscues, but it is more
often awash in sweet, joyous melody. It's certainly an album that's
about its individual songs, as these typically short nuggets are
designed to stand on their own. Lead songwriters Sam Lunsford and Sean
Poff craft agreeable nuggets which range from tight, trebly
folk-rock ("Tough Face," "Darling") to hazy, feedback-soaked
acid-pop ("Honeysuckle Rose and Pumpkin," "Tribe"). My intuition
tells me that each listener will comb through Songs of the Young
Sinclairs and identify their own favourites-- there's
plenty to pick from here -- and this might be the best thing about
the record. I'm personally bound to "Everything I Do is Wrong," a
twangy country-pop nugget that sits near disc's end, though resigned
"The Most Impressive," with its sun-wearied demeanour, has lately
been gaining ground based on atmosphere alone. Still, almost every song on
this seventeen-track LP has something warm and glorious about it,
and that's what makes these newly-disseminated locals such a rewarding find.
