Last year, Colin Caulfield released Boy under the moniker Young Man. In my eyes, it was one of the more underrated albums of 2010. It was all about being a boy and becoming a young man — heartfelt, honest, and irresistibly relatable. He sounds like me in the shower pretending to sound like Noah Lennox (Panda Bear). I was such a big fan of this little EP that I made sure to see him (and his band) play in NYC for CMJ last year. They blew my mind. The hushed feel that Caulfield maintains throughout the recording had completely vanished, and the soft, mostly acoustic songs were transformed into an energetic balls-out electric jam session. I wondered if this was the track that Young Man was headed, a road to manhood via the rock ‘n’ roll route.
Well, I was kinda right. Young Man’s new album Ideas Of Distance may not be the jam band record I had imagined, but he’s definitely using more electric guitar and gets to the verge of psychedelia here and there. A good example is one of the highlight tracks “Nothing.” The track starts off with a very Beach House-esque melody on a distant distorted guitar, followed by Caulfield’s youthful voice reciting simple yet striking lyrics. But this time he isn’t singing about playtime as a five-year-old; he’s singing about real young man problems like being in love, sex, and discovering one’s true self … and shit.
Ideas Of Distance is out now and available on Frenchkiss Records.
• Young Man: http://youngmanmusic.virb.com
• Frenchkiss: http://www.frenchkissrecords.com
