Melbourne’s Dylan Young looks as modern as any third-wave barista—baseball-cap clad, flanneled, poised before a microphone—on Massive Shoe’s cover. But throughout Way Dynamic’s third album, it’s clear that Young is a keen student of pop’s past, arranging stacked harmonies and lithe instrumentals over guitar-driven songs that veer from radio earworms to jam-band fodder and back: not a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but an old head in disguise. On his latest, Young’s major-key meditations on love and alienation are as winsome as a bay breeze, if occasionally as insubstantial.
First track “People Settle Down” throws open the windows with a blast of snare and bright keys, Young’s acoustic guitar line skating nimbly over the arrangement. His vocals enter this sunny tableau softly, hesitantly. The lyrics are all sweetness: “I wanna build a gentle house,” he avers. “I’ve seen it in movies/I’ve read it in books/Sometimes people settle down.” His intonation matches the tentative way this domestic fantasy builds—an elephant enters the proverbial room, and Young asks, “Could we see it through the night?” The song is a dreamy barn-raiser, hoisting this premise on warm guitar tones and a plaintive tone that proves a through-line throughout the record.
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Young plumbs myriad decades and pop songbooks on Massive Shoe, from the charming, Beatles-infused “In Review” (“I could have been your promoter/We’d have worked from home,” he sings dreamily, as if this arrangement is the height of opulence) to “Evening Star,” which sounds like a chimera of Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be” and Brazilian tropicalia. While these tracks are endearing enough, Way Dynamic’s real magic sits at the juncture of folk and forlornness, when Young’s guitar is allowed to ramble and his regrets are sharp enough to bruise. This formula works beautifully on “Miffed It,” an aching melody whose punch is amplified by its lyrical simplicity. “I miffed it,” Young admits at the opening, “And that’s the way it’s gonna stay.” He fumbled his love, and he has the melancholic ostinato to prove it. “I miss you,” he admits plainly, “Rather that would leave my brain.”
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
