Richard Youngs Autumn Response WB rating out of 100

It’s fitting that Richard Youngs’ name is plural.

We hear the voices of so many Richard Youngs on this album that you sense the singer either really loves the sound of himself or he’s somewhat obsessed with Michael Keaton’s top-notch rom-com Multiplicity; in live shows, it’s either going to be a loop pedal doing the trick, or some type of advanced self-cloning measure. Whichever Youngs’ preferred method of pulling this album off live, it has to involve vocal acrobatics and some intense gadgetry, as Autumn Response is the most confusing and difficult folk album in recent memory. If Joanna Newsom’s voice was a hurdle (and a rewarding hurdle once cleared), Youngs’ persistent layering of vocals, his canons and harmonies and multi-melodic songwriting is a fully-fledged, barbed-wired brick wall.

‘I Need the Light’ is at once a simple acoustic ballad, reminiscent of Joni Mitchell-esque folk, and as experimental and oddball as any prog-rock group. The looped vocals and interweaving layers of lightly picked acoustic guitar render the modesty of Youngs’ instrumentation obsolete: his music is at once spacious and muddled, simple yet convoluted. The basic message of the lyrics – “I need the light/To go into the darkness/I need to change/To go into the winter” – belies the complexity of the song’s structure. Through all these paradoxes you can come to one conclusion about Youngs’ musical ideal: it isn’t musicianship that makes music, but artfulness. Rather than practical dexterity, a truly original song (a truly avant garde movement) begins with one engaging idea. To point out the repetitive melody and rather clunky guitar through this track is one thing, but to appreciate Youngs’ vision is another, more difficultly fathomed take.

The hypnotic effect of Autumn Response is felt again in the haunting, echoing ‘One Hundred Stranded Horses’. Numerous Richard Youngs deliver the main melody, cannoning one another over a similarly repetitive, delay-laden guitar. ‘Paths in the Sky’ begins with heavily delayed guitars and a double-tracked vocal line, as Youngs shifts the muddling effect to his musical instrument of choice. The storm of confusion grows as the song progresses, voices doubling over each other, guitars creating a quiet cacophony.

‘Something Like Air’ sees Youngs offer two competing vocal parts in the form of a call-and-response between opposing registers: his usual fluttery falsetto juxtaposed with his little-heard chest voice. When the higher register delivers the line “something like air”, it is stunning: the track may be repetitive, but this one alteration to Autumn Response’s formula is enough to make ‘Something like Air’ a brilliantly engrossing 16-minute soundscape.

Pretentious it may be – and Youngs might come across as a tad arrogant in attempting it – but this concept (the entirety of the album is based solely around this one technique of fleshing out otherwise simple songwriting) is both interesting enough and offensive enough to really turn your head.

Often grating, sometimes unbelievably beautiful, Autumn Response could be your least favourite album of the year so far, or it could be the most profoundly moving listening experience you’ve had in a long time – in fact, it could very well jump between both in the same sitting. Underneath the motion sickness you may experience, however, you will be thoroughly convinced of one thing: that Youngs’ brand of folktronica is graceful and inspired, and Autumn Response is the work of an established musician and an ingenious artist.