ALBUM REVIEW: Keepsakes & Reminders – Youth Fountain
Two years on from the release of his energised debut, Letters To Our Former Selves, songwriter Tyler Zanon is back with YOUTH FOUNTAIN‘s sophomore effort, Keepsakes & Reminders. With co-vocalist Cody Muraro now having moved on to join emo-flavoured pop-punk outfit REAL FRIENDS, Zanon is the lone voice on this record, however, the band’s dual vocal style remains.
The content isn’t a departure from the band’s trademark style either – its soaring, almost painfully emotional pop-punk delivered with heart-string pulling sincerity largely provided by Zanon‘s impassioned vocals. The song-writing is stepped up a notch here, but there’s little in the way of experimentation – YOUTH FOUNTAIN knows what works and don’t want to mess with a winning formula.
And judging by the record’s opener, this going to be one hell of a winner. The intro My Mental Health sets the tone for what’s to come with some of the album’s most heart-wrenching lines, “I poisoned all my drinks/Again and again/Assuming it would help me be a completely different person.” From here, we transition directly into the album’s lead single Century, a huge emotional banger with lyrics destined to be screamed back at Zanon by legions of sweat-soaked fans. What the guitar work lacks in originality it makes up for in enthusiasm, recalling the best moments of THE STORY SO FAR and THE WONDER YEARS. What really sells the track however is Zanon‘s vocals. Capable of being both tender in the softer moments, and raw, almost strained, at its emotional peaks, the palpable sincerity of his vocal performance proves he was always going to be the one and only frontman YOUTH FOUNTAIN ever needed.
Unfortunately, Century reaches a high that the rest of the record can’t quite manage. Hideaway shows off the band’s post-hardcore influence, while Peace Offering shoots for the emotional heights of Century but doesn’t quite hit the mark. The pace slows down after the Interlude, as the longest track on the album, Dark Grey, goes for a slightly grander sound but doesn’t go quite far enough. Vertigo is another solid banger with some nice lyrical touches (“It came and went, like a match that burns at both ends“) dealing with the familiar themes of yearning, nostalgia, and regret.
The problem with the record being so front-loaded with emotion is that it struggles to maintain momentum across its 14 tracks. There’s little light and shade, with Zanon shooting between a nine and a ten on the emotional scale for almost the entire running time. Aiming for such intensity over so many songs can become exhausting, with some of the emotional climaxes struggling to elicit the emotions in the listener that are so earnestly put forward by the performer.
Things pick up on the last three tracks. In Take One Capsule A Day, the twinkling guitars set the perfect backdrop for Zanon to lament the struggles of coping with depression, building to a cathartic climax. It’s followed up by Scavenger, which pulls the angst in an existential direction, with the soaring chorus touching on feelings of ennui and purposelessness. The album finishes with one last outpouring of angst on Keepsake – a two and a half minute blast of emotion sold by some superb drum work.
Keepsakes & Reminders is indeed a stronger album in all senses than its predecessor, but it’s an incremental improvement that doesn’t see the songwriter budge from his comfort zone sonically. The record’s best quality is its irresistible sincerity which comes across in just about every aspect of its delivery, evoking feelings of heartbreak and longing. This is an album to listen to at 3am, sobering up as you stumble home from a disappointing emo night having been freshly rejected by your crush.
Rating: 7/10
Keepsakes & Reminders is set for release on November 5th via Pure Noise Records.
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