A Lagoon of Indie-Electro Floods Cambridge

When Youth Lagoon took the stage at TT the Bear’s, the musical mood was already thoroughly established. Preceding acts — Young Magic and locals Gem Club — gave their own respective takes on the genre that is indie-electro. Gem Club, with their delicate harmonies and simple yet decidedly rich song construction, was certainly autumn music. The songs are spaced-out and convey the emotion of whale calls. Young Magic, situated among candles and whorls of incense, are writhing intensities. The music was a mash-up of various looped and electronic passions infused with the very real human elements: a voice calling out and a hand beating out a rhythm from a floor tom. A spirited frenzy, with low and tribal vocals; there’s a power inherent in their songs, built in fractions by cooperating (and sometimes contrasting) elements.
Had Youth Lagoon taken his own unique spin on the psyched-out indie-electro we’d all already been enjoying, this show would have rounded out rather nicely. But Youth Lagoon set up, started playing and gave us nothing new. That’s hardly his fault; some more variety in the sets would have been beneficial. His set started, soft and crisp vocals over an electric whir, contemplative keyboard soon joined by an upbeat drum-pad and a happy little lick repeated on guitar. The vocals lift, the arpeggios leap about and the song eventually calms down to a quiet end, reminiscent of its beginning. A solid structure, but after three or so songs it became clear that this was the only structure Youth Lagoon had in the bag. Here’s the shame of this: taken independently, any of his songs (and I mean any, which is quite an achievement) are splendid, intricately crafted and emotive pieces of thoroughly enjoyable music. The androgyny of his voice takes away an arbitrary judgmental criterion and reveals more about the music beneath. But strung end-to-end, they are repetitive, almost monotonous, quite obviously unvarying from the same single structure. Only the final song somewhat broke the rule but it was more of an inversion than anything, staccato piano and guitar eventually chilling into a synth lull then revving to a poppy and upbeat finish.
If Youth Lagoon played maybe two or three of the songs that comprised his set — because, on their own, they are great songs — then filled the rest with more creative variations, this show would have been fully satisfactory. But as it was, I’ll wait a while before I see him again, in hopes that he branches out of the small sphere his music now occupies.