Young Mothers- Have Some Fun
Download the first single, "Graveyard", for free at http://www.facebook.com/youngmothers?v=app_4949752878&ref;=ts
“Young Mothers- Have Some Fun” can only be understood properly knowing what kind of album “Young Mothers- Have Some Fun” really is. Imagine a party, one of those truly epic parties that exist mostly in faded photographs and even more faded memories, of a night that started in the afternoon with strong drinks and a willingness to let go completely. “Have Some Fun” is like that party, a fever dream you aren’t sure really happened, but you’re sure it changed you regardless.
That’s not to make light of it either. It’s not simply the stuff of abandonment. There are all the ingredients for a real reckoning, too- that shadowed confrontation out behind the pool house. Listen to “Graveyard,” for instance. On the surface, it’s all jangled melodies and sexy lead guitar, perfect for zoning out or staring at yourself in the side mirror while your best pal floors the gas, but beneath the easy feelings, Zach Toporek, the man who leads his band of gentlemen Young Mothers, is laying into some serious shit, “So if you’ve got any skeletons hanging around in your head, they are gonna haunt you till you’re dead,” he sings, “Every time I look in your eyes, the only thing that I see, is a pile of bones lying next to me.” Brutal, no? But brutal in the very best sense, like Elvis Costello demanding, “I hope you’re happy now,” with all the cutthroat cynicism and honest empathy disgusting statements require.
“Lyin’ in the Sun” is another tricky one- all sunbathed and glorious, with that heavy organ just sort of crushing on the verses, before Toporek lets it out, “No one is coming through the window in my house,” bringing it back to sunless reality, drawn from his real life experience of fighting off a would be break & enterer- his own bruised eyes and bloody knuckles and glass covered floor a testament to the following line: “So if you wanna try for me and mine, baby I say, have a nice time.” If being an artist means taking the lumps for your art, Toporek seems to have learned the lesson in a very concrete way, twisting a fairly terrible event into a perfect pop song, with an upside down outro that leaves you spinning.
Then there’s “Helpless Child.” I’ve got no critical reservations when it comes to Zach, so I’ll just come out and say it. This is the song I’ve always known he had in him, the kind of tune that I sensed the first time we sipped milk shakes at In-N-Out Burger, trading CDs and giggling like little girls. “You know you only get one life,” Toporek sings, his voice resolute. “I was helpless to your love.” It’s that kind of universal sentiment that sets Young Mothers apart from the crowd of self-conscious indie-rockers and faux-miserable singer/songwriter types- Toporek and crew aren’t aiming for anyone’s idea of hip, they are seeking to create timeless pop music. “Helpless Child” nails the goal- at once classic, fresh and sincere. “Helpless Child” feels like that last drink you had before you stopped recalling things too clearly. You know you should set it down, but watching the room spin, with all your friends smiling and the girl you shouldn’t love trying to talk you down, you’re convinced that it is all going to work, that you’ll wake up the next morning with “a story that changes when you tell it every time.” You’re helpless to the moment, and so you take a drink and you wonder exactly what will happen next.
-Jason P. Woodbury, Tempe, AZ, 2010
