Herefordshire band YŪNGOLD offer up a noisy indie rock sound littered with fuzzy guitars, biting lyrics and shoegaze influences, which they describe as “explosive and engaging.”
The band started out back in 2022 when vocalist Frank Mooney and guitarist Oscar Featherstone were experimenting with the latter’s new Zvex Fuzz Factory guitar pedal. The pedal’s “completely unhinged sound” saw the duo explore a new creative direction, and they began writing new music until they found new musicians to share it with. A year later, a local jam night led to them discover pop-punk bassist Ash Greenway and classically trained jazz drummer Joe Shellard, who brought a whole new dynamic to the YŪNGOLD sound.
As Oscar explains: “To use an analogy, YŪNGOLD’s sound is like the nicest, most expensive T-shirt you own, but completely covered in cat hair. Basically, at the core of our music are beautifully crafted chords and fundamentals, paired with sharp lyricism, but filtered through a high-octane prism of fuzz and fire-starting rhythms.”
Our first taste of this was the band’s debut EP Force of Habit, which was released in May. It opens up with a funky fuzz-laden riff in the intro to Centre of the Earth, which continues under engaging vocals that flow into cries of “I don’t care.” Intense vocals lead a second verse, before a more atmospheric instrumental section builds up to a closing chorus “You think you’re the centre of the earth, It’s not always about you, It’s not always about you, darling.”
That’s followed by the more anthemic Completely Numb, which builds up to a big singalong chorus containing the delicious lines “Magnificent is what I am, Untouchable… A seamless cut to nothing but me, Completely numb in ecstasy.” A shoegazey instrumental section follows a second chorus, before the pace drops and builds to another chorus that ends with high-octane shoegazey guitars.
That’s followed by the equally engaging Fucking For Love, which opens up with the engaging vocals “I’m a 28 Male and I don’t like long, Walks on the beach, I just learned how to work a fucking washing machine.” Lively guitars kick in alongside the catchy vocals “I’m fucking in all the wrong places, I’m making you up, Out of a hundred familiar faces, I’m fucking for work, I’m fucking for her, I’m fucking high and low, I wonder, can I keep it up, Just fucking for love.” And the EP concludes with Cult, which began with fun guitar chords that continue under engaging echoey vocals, which drops into more laid-back vocals that begin “I think I’m in a cult and you’re my leader.”
Speaking on the EP, Oscar told us: “Force of Habit is an absolutely huge milestone for us, we think it’s an awesome EP, and Ryan at AR Studios must be mentioned for the fantastic job capturing our sound and producing it. This EP encapsulates the beginnings of us as a band, it features the very first song we originally demoed back in 2022, Completely Numb, and the first track we wrote collectively as a 4-piece, Centre of the Earth. We’ve written almost 30 originals by now, so this EP feels like a Polaroid of a family holiday. It’s something we hold very dear, and it was important to us that this early stage of the band’s sound is captured and celebrated.”
The YŪNGOLD sound has been influenced by other UK indie bands like The Dead Pirates and Kamggarn, as well as bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Deftones. “We’re finding that our sound is steadily becoming more cyclical and self reflective,” Oscar explains. “As our influences brew into our work from the outer rim of the sonic potluck, we hope to only get more distinctly YŪNGOLDian in the eye of that stewy storm.”
And on what inspires them to write music, he added: “We talk a lot about mental health, but I think writing about ‘mental health’ is such a broad statement. Ahuge number of songs are about ‘mental health’ in some ven-diagrammatic way, like who doesn’t write about mental health a bit. More specifically a lot of our songs end up about abrasive feelings of self-loathing tied into disordered attraction, passion tipping over into anguish and complex relationships with throbbing egoes and crippling self-doubt.
“Lyrics are written by Frank, and sometimes that can take a while after a song has been ‘finished’ – this is totally his ‘process’ and is never really annoying. Sometimes at smaller gigs we perform lyricless incarnations of new songs with Frank garbling melodically concrete nonsense into the mic, just to test how they feel live while the true sentiment of the song is crystallising. It’s often fun to beta test a tune like this, and sometimes the lyrics we land on were figured out in that live chemical reaction.”
The release of their debut EP has only fired up YŪNGOLD to release even more music. They’re booked in for more sessions at AR Studios and Oscar tells us he “can’t keep up with the number of songs we’re writing,” so expect plenty more new music from them very soon. And you can see the band play at London’s O2 Academy Islington in September, with tickets available here.
And Oscar added: “YŪNGOLD, it’s pronounced kinda like “YOOHNGULD.” So say it and pretend you’re Dutch and it’ll probably sound right. Unless you’re already Dutch, then just say it, don’t change a thing, you’re perfect, and we love you.”
You can follow YŪNGOLD on Instagram, and check out their music on Spotify and Apple Music.
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