Farewell Young Lovers

Crushed Stars—Farewell Young Lovers

Review by Luis A. Apolaya

The eighth release from Todd Gautreau’s Dallas-based solo project is soft-spoken, unassuming, sometimes melancholy, and often soothing. The vocals have a distant shoegaze quality and complement the album’s dreamy instrumentation nicely. Though these songs are by no means complex, their simplicity and use of repetition are more mesmerizing than they are tiring. To quote an Internet reviewer, this is the kind of stuff to play when the world is moving in slow motion. Recommended tracks: 2, 3, 4, 5, 9. RIYL Nick Drake, Cults, the xx, Pavement.

*1. (2:52) Excited and upbeat, fuzzy guitar and lively drums, vocals are especially distant here, will probably make you nod your head, feels like the outlier compared to the more laid-back songs of most of the rest of the album.
**2. (3:28) Pleasantly mid-tempo and relaxing, very beautiful acoustic and soft electric guitar work, synth organ comes in occasionally, great melody.
*3. (4:07) More slow-paced dreamy stuff, drums are a little livelier here, lots of guitar with different distortions.
*4. (4:58) Very nice acoustic guitar riff and electric piano work, strings come in halfway through, feels sad yet oddly hopeful.
*5. (2:57) Soft acoustic guitar and piano lead, female vocalist joins in, has a palpable melancholy mood to it, finishes with a Theremin-like synth.
6. (3:11) Instrumental, hardly noticeable electric piano at the start, does not rise in volume until about halfway through when eerie synth work comes in, feels like video game music to a nature-themed dungeon.
*7. (2:24) The one bona fide rocker in this album, fuzzy guitar and drums go strong, female vocalist also appears here.
8. (3:38) Sounds like track 3 with a different melody, interesting instrumental outro.
**9. (4:14) Slow, great electric guitar work throughout, could potentially put a baby to sleep, has the same feel as the intro to Radiohead’s “The Tourist”.