Just when you decided to bop the next minimalist garage band that came along the pike with an over-sized cartoon mallet, along comes War Prayers by Young People. Their skronky guitar/free jazz drumz/wild vox lineup (the indie rock equivalent of a power trio) will inevitably be compared to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which is a darned shame, 'cause War Prayers is one of the best records of 2003. It took me about a dozen listens to realize that it was only 24 minutes long. Eleven songs. Needless to say, the songs are short. The songs, at least three or four of 'em, had been stuck in my head for some time, so I went back to see exactly how many choruses they could've possibly repeated to get 'em stuck like that. The answer, in most cases, was one. Which was a weird discovery to make. Is something a chorus if it's not repeated, or is it just a rather good hook?
Either way, it works. Like most of the tunes on the album, "Tammy Faye," the LP's second track, seems structured around Katie Eastburn's seemingly spontaneous vocal performance. As a singer, she seems to fit in the way Kim Gordon has tried to on later Sonic Youth recordings (specifically in her improvised vocals throughout their SYR EPs), except, well, Eastburn's a far more nuanced singer than Gordon. "Tammy Faye," then, feels like a continuous performance, as she flits around octave-leaping melodies with abandon, Jeff Rosenberg's guitar tracking her flights. ('course, it's probably all meticulously rehearsed, which makes it even cooler.) The "take" builds and builds, 'til it releases into what obviously
should be the chorus, signaled by a guitar dropout and the drums switching to a marching thrum: "We are all going, we are all goooOOOOing." And then it's over.
There's lots of playfulness about the disc, and virtually no sneering or posturing, which is what separates it from the rest o' them garage kids with shaggy haircuts. They're free to skip from totally joyous chaotic country romps ("The Lord") to avant-garde renditions of old folk tunes ("The Valley") to dreamy recitations ("Early Poetry") to rumbling stumbling marches ("Rhumba"). In this, Young People have achieved that rare balance between accessibility and experimentation. And - yeah, yeah, yeah - it's great.
