Young and Sexy

Young and Sexy’s sophomore album succeeds where many have failed: it revives classic pop, but doesn’t bruise it with the worst of today’s shticks. It doesn’t sound phoney, it doesn’t get lost in abstruseness, and it’s not made for teenagers to impress their classmates by namedropping. Instead it is subtle, tactfully arranged and very, very pretty. Young and Sexy have real compunction — they’re not showy, and they don’t waste all their chips on one single part of an arrangement. Their multi-vocal harmonies are tuned and subdued to a choral accuracy, their instrumental melodies are lucid and complimentary, and their allusions to retro acts are tastefully integrated into newer sounds. There are strokes of soft psych-pop, sharpest in the jazzy flushes through "The Night Wears a Sombrero,” and in the vocals of a certain male member who sounds a bit like Curt Boettcher. The pilfered ideas dissolve nicely into sparse, empty-theatre post-rock effects, coming across soft-as-plume but not trite. The closing track, "Satellite,” is revamped country rock in the league of beloved fellow revival act Beachwood Sparks. These songs tend to meld together, but Young and Sexy are really on to something, they just seem a little shy. Here’s hoping that, with some much-deserved encouragement, Y&S go on to show many of their confused peers how you should treat your idols.