Youth Valley have given their second album a title that promises a few uncomfortable conversations. As Passive Aggressive As It Gets concerns itself with the feelings we struggle to express, the resentments we allow to grow and the awkward business of understanding one another. Their story began in 2019, with the three-song Youth Valley EP following in 2020 and their debut album, Lullabies For Adults, arriving in 2023 through Make Me Happy Records and Shelflife Records. Childhood experiences and their continuing influence on adult life have been recurring concerns in their songwriting. This second album, released through Fine! Records, brings that emotional background into sharper contact with anger, distance and the difficulties of relationships. It also gives their shoegaze and dream pop a particularly restless post punk energy.
Joseph Powell supplies the lyrics, vocals and guitar, alongside guitarists George V and Aki Rei, with Rei also contributing keys. Dean Jola handles drums and percussion, while longtime collaborator Alex Bolpasis plays bass throughout. Bolpasis also recorded and mixed the album at Suono Studio, sharing production duties with Powell, with Nick Townsend handling mastering at Infrasonic Sound. Those details deserve a mention because the relationship between the instruments is such a pleasure here. The guitars can become wonderfully dense, the rhythm section frequently sets a demanding pace, and you can still follow the individual parts. Youth Valley know how to make a song feel busy, tense and full of movement while keeping its melody clearly in view. Across these ten tracks, that attention to arrangement gives their emotional subject matter a very physical expression.
Before any of that properly gets going, ‘intro’ offers a curious little false start. It has the feel of a phone left recording on the mixing desk, catching a fragment of activity before the album begins in earnest. The sound design comes from George V and Powell, and there is something pleasingly informal about this brief opening. You get the impression of arriving while preparations are still underway. It gives the record a human point of entry, a small glimpse into its making that leaves you wondering what will follow. That sense of anticipation gets its answer fairly quickly.
‘cerberus’ announces the full band with a moody confidence, and it fair shifts along. Bolpasis and Jola provide the forward motion, their bass and drums giving the song a firm sense of direction through the relatively sparse verses. Those spaces make the arrival of the choruses especially satisfying. The guitars come in thick with fuzz, filling out the arrangement and making the song feel suddenly much larger. I love how the band manage that change in density while maintaining the momentum underneath. Then comes the dip around the middle, which gives you time to register how much pressure has been building. When everyone comes crashing back in, the scale of it’s tremendous. Youth Valley have already established a useful principle for the record: paying attention to the quieter passages makes the loud ones even more rewarding.
There’s barely time to settle before ‘pills’ gets underway, with distorted guitars setting a similarly urgent pace. The central riff has been rattling about my head since I first heard it, and it gives the song a strong identity within seconds. You can hear the DIIV influence in the combination of guitar detail and persistent movement, a connection that fits naturally with the band’s acknowledged influences. What I particularly enjoy is how clearly that riff remains defined as the arrangement changes around it. The mix allows you to appreciate the thickness of the guitars and the movement within them at the same time. I keep coming back to that guitar figure, which seems to become more familiar and more enjoyable with every play.
Bass takes charge of our introduction to the oddly titled ‘earthbiter’, and the mood becomes decidedly darker. Gothgaze feels like a useful description for this one, with the rhythm section giving weight and motion to its brooding atmosphere. Powell delivers the words with a mantra like insistence, the repetition making the vocal feel increasingly absorbed in its own troubled thoughts. The song concerns anger that has been allowed to remain unresolved, and that sense of fixation comes through in the delivery. By the closing section, the band allow themselves a much greater freedom, and the release is sublime. The arrangement opens out with an abandon that feels thoroughly earned by everything preceding it.
The sound of waves meeting the shore introduces ‘ocean dream’, and the album gives us room to slow down. Chiming guitars establish a gentler pace, with enough space around the notes for you to appreciate their tone and the way they continue sounding. Across its runtime, the track gives this more relaxed approach proper time to develop. The drums arrive around the halfway point, making their entrance a significant event in the arrangement. I love the decision to give the bass the fuzz here. That roughness underneath allows the guitars to retain their clarity and provide the sort of hazy, melodic atmosphere that brings Beach House to mind. Your attention moves between the grain of the bass and the lighter guitar sound above it. Placed after the intensity of the opening songs, it offers a welcome change in pace and a fuller sense of the band’s range.
‘anchored’ restores the quicker tempo, and the doubled vocal immediately gives me something to enjoy. The effect adds thickness to Powell’s delivery, helping it sit within an arrangement whose guitar parts are particularly insistent. There is a real physical force to the playing here. The guitars keep pressing forward, and the density of the song makes its precision all the more impressive. You can follow each part clearly, hearing how the instruments work together and where they occupy their own space. That clarity keeps the repeated guitar phrases interesting, since your ear has several elements to follow within the same passage. Bolpasis and Powell’s production deserves credit for preserving that definition.
My album highlight arrives with ‘winning’, which I liked enough to play on my October DKFM show. Youth Valley’s interpretation of The Sound song fits beautifully into the record, bringing one of their acknowledged influences directly into the tracklist. The central guitar riff has an enormous presence, and the movement between quiet and loud passages gives it repeated opportunities to make an impression. Each return to a fuller arrangement feels satisfying because the surrounding space has been so well judged. Powell’s vocal melody adds a properly moody character, maintaining that emotional seriousness as the guitars expand around him. I get big Cure vibes in places, particularly in the relationship between the melodic appeal and the darker atmosphere. That combination has always been an easy way to my affections. Here, it produces a performance that feels completely at home among Youth Valley’s own songs and makes an immediate case for another listen.
There is a different sort of movement to ‘sunday oh monday’, which immediately has me thinking of a lost Talking Heads track with Peter Hook on bass. That is quite a combination to have running through your head, and it suits the song’s rhythmic character. The bass has enough personality to hold your attention in its own right, contributing directly to the tune’s appeal. Everything seems eager to keep moving, giving the performance a restless quality that sits comfortably within the album. Around the middle, a breakdown changes the relationship between the parts and prepares us for a more exuberant closing section. I really enjoy how that final passage develops the mood already present in the song. The increase in energy feels natural, growing from the rhythm and arrangement.
With the shortest of runtimes ‘just friends’ gets through its business with considerable enthusiasm. Built around a cool wee riff, it maintains the album’s appetite for pace and gives that central idea plenty of room to do its work. The directness is part of the pleasure. Following the changes within ‘sunday oh monday’, its compact arrangement keeps the sequence moving with a satisfying sense of purpose. It also gives your ears a concise dose of the band’s melodic instincts before the much longer closing track. Youth Valley sound thoroughly comfortable working at this scale, making a few minutes feel complete.
Then ‘the turn’ takes its almighty runtime to explore the full extent of what this band can do. Chiming guitar passages, heavily fuzzed sections and moody vocals all have their place, with instrumental stretches allowing the musicians to develop their ideas at greater length. The changes keep you involved because they recall sounds and approaches you have already enjoyed across the record. You recognise the guitar clarity, the density and the willingness to give an arrangement time to open out. Those familiar qualities acquire a different significance when they are brought together within one extended piece. I love the way it moves through its various sections, allowing a gentler guitar sound to register fully before taking us towards something much heavier. The vocal passages keep a human presence within that broad musical scope. By this point, the band have earned your attention, and they use the closing minutes with confidence. It’s a tremendous way to finish.
As Passive Aggressive As It Gets gives Youth Valley plenty to say about the feelings that complicate our relationships, and their arrangements make those tensions audible. The restraint in ‘earthbiter’, the space within ‘ocean dream’ and the repeated changes in intensity throughout ‘winning’ each offer a different way of experiencing the album’s emotional concerns. I love the contribution of the bass across the record, the care taken over the guitar sound and the willingness to let the songs develop at different lengths. There is pleasure in the riffs and the pace, alongside plenty to consider once you spend time with the whole sequence. Give it that time, follow the individual parts and enjoy how they come together. Youth Valley may be leaving some difficult feelings unspoken, but my enthusiasm for this record is about as direct as it gets.
As Passive Aggressive As It Gets is out now via Fine! Records. You can check it out over on the Youth Valley Bandcamp page.
You can follow Youth Valley on social media here…
Photo Credit
Elpida Rota Tikof
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