Auto-tuned electro-pop from Leeds based, Nottingham born, solo artist. First track Mystery is dancefloor indie-electro by numbers, a strident, standard beat, whizzy synths, aggressively barked vocals that turn into semi-falsetto coos on the chorus of ‘I could never let you be alone/Please take my heart it is your own.’ It’s so plastic and artificial, reminscent of a great number of contemporary and retro pop artists yet lacking the heart and the edge that made them pioneers in their field.
Second track Animal doesn’t help matters, a racing drum-beat, similarly tweeting synths fluttering about, but there’s nothing going on under the surface, if anything, listening to this song starts to turn a song into a piece of structural engineering, a scaffolding where a building may one day stand, it dips, it rises, it does things and there are lyrics, but it’s all so meaningless until you put the bricks and mortar in place, fill it with people. Yes, it’s a laboured metaphor and it kind of loses its way at times, but that’s equally as apt a description of this as the metaphor itself.
Unbelievably it gets even worse on the drippy pop-ballad Little Heart, it sounds like a lost East 17 track that’s unfortunately been discovered. The best that can be said about Stars is that it’s inoffensive. Penultimate track Breeze is cut from similar cloth to the EP’s opener, a big love-based chorus intermingled with dancable beats. Closing track Mixtape finds Navajo Youth crooning primarily in falsetto, sounding a bit like Annie Lennox at times, Nizlopi at others, whilst there’s a warmer feel to the synths on this slower tune than elsewhere, but lyrically it’s occasionally embarassing when it’s striving for something genuine and sweet.
Maybe this will appeal to someone, I don’t know, it’s rare that I can’t find much in the way of constructive criticism to offer a record, and I’m sure whatever instruments, drum machines, synths he’s using he’s very good at using them, and his voice isn’t awful, but I can’t find much to hold the attention across these songs. This isn’t the most terrible collection of music I’ve ever heard, but it is utterly forgettable, which might be worse.
[Rating:1]
