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Rating: You scoundrels. Not even a measly review on the Youngbloods. Well, I'll try to pay tribute to their masterpiece “Elephant Mountain”, yes I know the cover looks like that of an 80s video game.
The story of the band is the story of Jesse Colin Young, who respectively in '64 and '65, at a very young age, composed two extraordinary albums that we could define as a hybrid between Tim Hardin and Bob Dylan, with a lot of compositional talent and creativity for sale. I strongly recommend you recover them if you are fans of Dylan.
The stuff of a top-notch songwriter was abandoned for a shady commercial operation, the Youngbloods, who could have hardly been called otherwise given Jesse's exclusive contribution, were thrown into the British Invasion cauldron to try to break the charts with the sound of sugary pop from across the ocean that made girls tear their hair out.
But it didn’t work out, or rather it worked perhaps too well, because as some Kinks struggled to mock the American sound, Young decided to mock the British sound. Jesse's creative talent thus remained entangled in a network in the middle of the ocean and the first album from '67 demonstrates it fully, an album that wants to sound British but is a melodic mise-en-scène where Jesse's talent gets entangled in a sound too sweetened for his intricate compositions.
And so the transformation happens, what was a thoughtful and deep songwriter turns into a minstrel of cotton candy pop, and the operation is perfectly successful anyway, although that music is far from the strings of his soul, the talent when it’s there breaks the nets and crosses the oceans.
So to the first record we owe "Get Together" by Dino Valenti which made them famous for a period, paradoxically climbing the charts two years later, in '69, when the summer of love was already cooked and buried. In the first album, we find other wonderful tracks to name a few: "Tears Are Falling", "Foolin' Around (The Waltz)".
But I want to come to Jesse's masterpiece, that “Elephant Mountain” of '69 where every single note generates dopamine and rejuvenates the spirits dwelling there. Jesse is a gentle music god, one who takes you by the hand and together you go for a smiling walk in a sunny park while all around is gray and raining. It's a sunshine pop album, does sunshine pop exist? If it doesn’t, I’ll invent it, or rather Jesse Young invented it.
It's primarily a versatile album, defining it as folk, pop or rock would be limiting, in fact, we find long jams with jazz elements like in “On Sir Francis Drake”, where it seems like you're hearing the bow of the Queen of England’s pirate sway, a prog song in all respects. There's the whimsical folk of “Darkness, Darkness”, there's the positive vibes of “Sunlight”. The album is all a vibration for the spirit. “Beautiful” is a blues-boogie ode to joy. "Rain Song (Don't Let the Rain Bring You Down)" another anthem against weather bitterness, a sun pop injection with beautiful choirs and guitars playing with the splashing water accompanying the piece. A free-jazz digression: “Trillium”, and even when Jesse tries to write a sad song like “Quicksand” the composition with the background violins and trumpets sweeten us and melt us, making the quicksand a clay pool to slow dance in.
The album bids us farewell with “Ride The Wind”, one of the sweetest and most delicate compositions I've had the fortune to listen to so far, a perfect alchemy between jazz and folk, a jam that lasts more than six minutes but feels fresh as a fleeting spring breeze.
Jesse, I care deeply for you and you’ve gathered a heap of dust compared to what you've sown, but I'm sure that as you've always composed music with heart, you've led and are leading an authentic life, radiant with happiness, like your music that I’ll never tire of listening to.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Darkness, Darkness (03:54)
Darkness, Darkness
Be my pillow
Take my hand
And let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep
Darkness, Darkness
Hide my yearning
For the things I cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning
Toward the things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see
Darkness, darkness,
Long and lonesome,
Ease the day that brings me pain.
I have felt the edge of sadness,
I have known the depth of fear.
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with the endless night,
Take away, take away the pain of knowing,
Fill the emptiness of right now,
Emptiness of right now, now, now
Emptiness of ri-ight now.
Darkness, darkness, be my pillow,
Take my hand, and let me sleep.
In the coolness of your shadow,
In the silence, the silence of your deep.
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with the endless night,
Take away, take away the pain of knowing
Fill the emptiness of right now,
Emptiness of right now now now
Emptiness of right....
Oh yeah Oh yeah
Emptiness, emptiness
Oh yeah
04 Sunlight (03:07)
Have you seen the sunlight pouring through her hair
Felt her warm mouth on you in the summer's air
Running in a field of brown
Laughing rolling on the ground
Smiling as she pulls you down
That's the way she feels about you
If your dreams can wake you screaming in the night
She can touch your face and take away your fright
Like a tree in the meadow wind
She will bend to take you in
Makes no difference of where you been
That's the way she feels about you
If you wake up screaming
Scared about what you're dreaming
You know she is there she can share
You're aware she cares about you
In the morning wake up laughing with the day
She will smile and ask you with her eyes to stay
Like the sunshine warms the sand
She will touch you with her hands
Touching makes you understand
That's the way she feels about you
Like the sunshine warms the sand
She will touch you with her hands
Touching makes you understand
That's the way she feels about you
That's the way she feels about you
That's the way she feels about you
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