Richard Youngs – Beyond The Valley of Ultrahits

With this bafflingly titled 'pop' LP, Richard Youngs makes efforts towards a folk/electronica hybrid as much akin to Richard Thompson as to Four Tet, but lands closer to the funeral dirge of a battered Casio keyboard. Radio Innocents, Collapsing Stars, Oh Reality: every song here goes around in unrewarding circles like a 6am roach no one can quite face which has long since been spent, with enough inane existentialism in the lyrics to match such a scene.

You'd be hard pressed trying to recall a single line of melody, remarkable really considering how often they repeat themselves. There is just no blood to these 'Ultrahits'. Youngs is vocally on autopilot, musically static and lyrically flimsy, and all of this compounds to form an offensively inoffensive collection, not badly composed in the strictest sense, but completely devoid of character. It’s hard to invest in Youngs' new shtick when even he sounds so thoroughly disinterested. [Oisín Kealy]