The Like Young are Joe and Amanda, who formerly were half of
Wolfie and all of
Busy Toby. Their debut record is a spare, angry emo-pop-punk disc that falls short of being good and fails to even be interesting, which
Wolfie always was. The instrumentation is simple -- guitar, bass, drums -- throughout. Simple to the point of boring, unfortunately. The lyrics are more interesting. They show a new sense of aggressiveness that is a bit of a surprise. Tracks like "Looked Up" and "Snobs and Slobs" sound downright angry, in a cute way (as in you're so cute when you're angry). Yeah, no matter how snotty and off-kilter Joe makes his lead vocals, no matter how distorted the guitars are, no matter how many
Weezer songs they "borrow," no matter how tough they think they are sounding, the Like Young are doomed to be cute. Amanda's backing vocals are cute and sweet. Joe's anger is cute. Too bad they can't be cute and interesting. Maybe if they ditch the self-imposed ban on arrangements and instrumentation and expand their generic punk-lite sound, the next record won't be as blah as this one. ~ Tim Sendra