Richard Youngs
Autumn Response

LA RECENSIONE

Beautiful Vienna, it's wonderful to visit this imperial and elegant city. It's not the first time I've been here, but each time it gives me something new. Yet there's something I miss about my Verona.

No, it's not the arena, nor the beautiful alleys that you don't know where they lead to. I miss the countryside, especially the fantastic landscape by the lake. My girlfriend lives there.

I love that house, but there's something she doesn't know: I've been imagining for a while walking through the vineyards and peach orchards just outside her door together with Richard Youngs, or at least with his music. More precisely with the notes of Autumn Response that slowly vibrate in my ears, bringing forth a delightful melancholy and memories of experiences never lived. This experience, first and foremost, has never been experienced by me, and I never will, so as not to ruin the magic of imagination.

I like to fantasize about listening to the delay on his angelic voice, while I might savor a juicy peach. These timeless pieces, which could have been written today or a hundred years ago, the melodies are so simple. Just guitar and voice, with delay and overlays of the latter, creating intersections, clashes, and overlays of that same voice, always him, alone, just like me in the countryside.

Sing away, my dear Richard, and accompany the honey that flows from your mouth with a sweetly acidic folk acoustic guitar, also often in delay.

He makes us relax or cry, depending on our mood, or depending on what he wants to tell us at that moment. It all ends with "Something Like Air", a 16-minute ethereal composition, smoky, fleeting just like the air, in its obsessive minimalism, in its Buckleyan folk.

I highly recommend this fabulous album to those who want to find themselves in the metropolitan jungle, or to those who want to think for 40 minutes about the little big things of the world, which might be hiding in the lawn of your house or in a word from a friend not listened to carefully.

I dedicate my love for this album to my girlfriend, who doesn't even know Richard Youngs exists, but who, without lifting a finger and without uttering a word, made me love it.