The Haunted Youth from Belgium may be one of the most interesting bands making a tasty, modern blend of various gazey genres that can't be directly connected to any of them, but works fantastically as a whole. The dream poppy synthwavey shoegazey emo rock or whatnot outfit released their second album and it's as good as their debut from 2022.
What is great about their music is the sheer catchiness of each and every song on the album. You can go through the list of tracks and tick every position in the Am I going to Sing it With the Band column. The short and sweet one-liner chorus in In My Head or the chanting-like vocals in Deathwish or the almost r'n'b electronica in Wake Up. But when the music deepens and swallows, when the synths are layered until they fill out all the available space and when the compositions reach the euphoric optimum, this is where I feel the album the most. No wonder that Emo Song seems to be the most popular out of the whole release, it does the perfect job of drawing the audience in blissful noise. And so does the ballad-like Falling to Pieces.
It seems that Joachim Liebens' outfit gains a lot of recognition in Western Europe, I'd love to see them live one day. My only hope is that they won't decide to change their music to please the broader audience and will stay true to the dreamy/shoegazey music that made me notice them in the first place.
Boys Cry Too costs 11 EUR (8.99 GBP).
Check: Emo Song
Country: Belgium
Genre: shoegazey indie rock
Label: Anti-Pop/PIAS
