“September,” the lead track from Youth XL’s new EP Social Creature, starts with a whine of feedback and a scream of “let’s go!” before the song struts into its open figures, all cylinders firing. The energy of the song, however, can’t hide the cleverness of the songwriting. As the song — “about breaking up and floundering around in the nostalgia of past relationships,” the liner notes reveal — moves through its middle section, positively Beatlesque backing vocals rise and fall and the chord structures get knotty, mirroring the emotional maze the singer is lost in.
“So this September / Make your choice: me or not? / Hope ya won’t have to think twice about it / I’m thinkin’ once should be enough / Finding your handwriting on my stuff Well, it makes it tough / I’m trapped in a reality that I’m making up / Time is running out and yet it’s infinite.”
The New Haven-based group — Alex McGuire on vocals and guitar, Mike Saunders on bass, Dominick Gregoretti on lead guitar, and Shaun Larson on drums — was a party band at a show at Cafe Nine in July, playing a high-energy, danceable set while McGuire tossed off joke after joke in between songs and the band members looked as though they were having the time of their lives.
There’s plenty of evidence of that band on Social Creature. The second song, “Salad,” “about struggling to eat healthy and loving your mom,” the liner notes say, is an angular workout of a number that finds McGuire rapidly spitting out lyrics detailing his dietary battles and his journey to learn more about how to eat better food, culminating in a sneering chorus directed at himself. “Cut out steak and chicken / Look what’s on your plate now / It’s a nice green salad / It’s a nice green salad / It’s a nice green salad / Then it’s gone / You’re hungrier than when ya started / Eating healthy like my mom / Cuz eatin’ healthy keeps me strong.” The vocal delivery reveals the importance of that repetition; it’s McGuire trying to convince himself, in the face of all odds and his own hunger, that he’s doing the right thing. That so much songcraft was applied to such an important yet frivolous subject says a lot about the cockeyed way the band views the world.
But the space between the heartbreak of “September” and the fun of “Salad” is occupied nicely by the final two songs, “Fake Fun” and “Social Creature.” As before, the music is upbeat and clever, full of dynamic shifts, stops and starts, twists and turns, that keep the ear and brain engaged. But the lyrical content is aiming for deeper than a quick joke. “Fake Fun” is described as “about the downsides of partying too much,” but it digs into that idea more to come up with something of a cautionary tale about the harm caused by indulging too much in addictive substances — a serious topic by any measure. Whereas “Social Creature,” about social media, manages to touch on both the inherent shallowness of social media platforms and the chasm of loneliness that many people felt during the pandemic, and used those platforms to try to fill. The song passes in less than four minutes, but the thoughts linger.
“We made a record during the worst year ever,” the liner notes read, explaining that the songs were written “during practice sessions over 2019 and into 2020. These four songs represent a shift in the Youth XL sound. A little more grown-up, yet a little more raw.” That kind of self-awareness suggests that Youth XL is, despite the name, moving swiftly into adulthood — without losing its sense of fun.
Social Creature is available on Bandcamp.
