Album Review: Young Hunter, Bleeding Gold
Posted in Reviews on November 5th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
This past summer, Portland, Oregon-based atmospheric heavy rockers Young Hunter released their first single in seven years, “Loudness Wars” (posted here), while at the same time marking the 10th anniversary of the current inception of the band. Bundled on a self-released cassette with art by vocalist/synthesist/percussionist Sara Pinnell, “Loudness Wars” was accompanied by “The Greatest Hits” (premiered here), and those two tracks were a sign of life from a band who, after issuing the distinct and progressive Dayhiker (review here), seemed not to have made it to the other side of the pandemic.
Comprised of five tracks running a short-LP’s 32 minutes, Bleeding Gold upends that narrative on a couple levels. Foremost by existing, admittedly, but as “Bone Cutter’s Anthem” executes a subtle build across six minutes to arrive at its instrumental crescendo with about one still to go, the fluidity of Young Hunter‘s craft and the production of Tim Green (Louder Studios, Grass Valley, CA), who also mixed, highlights the growth the band have consistently offered from release to release, as if, say, it hasn’t been seven years.
And in part that’s because the band — Pinnell, guitarist/vocalist Benjamin Ford-Sala, guitarist Erik Wells, source-of-the-sway bassist Sam Dean, and drummer Grant Pierce — recorded it four years ago. The sleek swing that emerged from 2016’s self-titled (review here) and set the stage for expansion in Dayhiker is pushed another step forward here, and as has been the case since the band’s pre-Portland days when they were based in Arizona, proffering the rawness of 2013’s EP Embers at the Foot of Dark Mountain (review here) or the 2012 full-length, Stone Tools (discussed here), before it, the band ride that underlying groove with an attention to detail in the melody and arrangements.
Having two vocalists, either of whom is able to carry a song on their own, is an asset that shouldn’t be understated, for Young Hunter generally and particularly on Bleeding Gold. The course of the album as a whole — and this is something that I think it probably helped by it being relatively brief as a collection compared to 40- or 45-minute LPs — is linear, and it expands outward from “Bone Cutter’s Anthem” into the subsequent title-track with standalone guitar howling out in dark Americana style across a mostly empty landscape that bursts to life without actually bursting; the guitar telegraphs the change and the drums, bass and keys embark on the verse with ease that feels organic in keeping with the ambience of the intro.
Mood as paramount, but still in service to the song itself. The verse rests on the bass and drums as the guitars step back to give Pinnell space for layering and become a kind of instrumental hook in offsetting the vocals, and a mellow-heavy vibe is cast without giving up the evocation of land in the guitar, which is a central stylistic element of the band that goes as far back as they do.
The difference between Bleeding Gold, which, again, represents where they were in terms of songwriting probably five years ago or more — it nonetheless remains the most recent full-length they’ve got, and after taking four years to get this one out, I’m not thinking they’ll do a follow-up in six months — and everything that came before it is the purposefulness of what they’re constructing in the songs. It’s not just that “Bone Cutter’s Anthem” has a linear build into a payoff or that “Bleeding Gold” itself settles into a mid-tempo swing like it’s-been-here-the-whole-time-and-oh-you-just-showed-up-that’s-nice.
It’s the varied intent between the two, and the sidestep that arrives with the keyboardy intro to centerpiece “Skulls of Our Leaders,” which follows. Joined by Pinnell, Ford-Sala makes his first vocal appearance on the third of the five inclusions, and the shift is played well for adding to the scope of the song, the standout starting line, “I’ve come for the skulls of our leaders,” and the album broadly. Like everything here, it feels like a purposeful choice, and maybe not one that Young Hunter would have been able to make seven years ago.
Resolved in a lush melody with a characteristically straightforward groove beneath, “Skulls of Our Leaders” prefaces the duet of closer “Theater of War” in a way that is further emblematic of the arc being drawn across Bleeding Gold from beginning to end, and before the band digs into the finale which is also the longest inclusion at 7:30 — not by a ton, but still — the penultimate “Darkest Vine” regrounds in the spirit of “Bleeding Gold” or “Bone Cutter’s Anthem.” An opening drone resonates like string sounds before a groove that ’70s-era Scorpions would’ve been proud to produce backs Pinnell, who seems to take patterning cues from Madonna‘s “Into the Groove” while the lead guitar stretches out like the later portion of The Beatles‘ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and manages thereby to be both languid and headpinning. They bring “Darkest Vine” to a push later with Pierce‘s crash driving the charge and intertwining guitars over top, ambient vocals, etc., but don’t go so far out that they can’t bring the song back to a final verse to end, stopping cold ahead of “Theater of War.”
As one might expect for a record that seems to have been put together with such cohesion and direction behind it, “Theater of War” is not haphazard in drawing Bleeding Gold to a close. In both its dually-voiced first half and the somewhat strutting instrumental takeoff of its second, it encapsulates and summarizes well a lot of what has worked about the record all along, without letting the sense of consideration in the material slip. Listening, it doesn’t seem like it was written specifically to cap the album, but in all likelihood, if Young Hunter didn’t know it was the finish by the time it was recorded, it couldn’t have been long after they sampled the first mixdown. It’s an ending you know is coming but that remains satisfying, and another example of what Young Hunter have to offer in bringing together a not-overdone feeling of drama and exploration with solid structuring and proggier textures of melody and rhythm in layering.
If Bleeding Gold had shown up four years ago, or three, I’d have said something like, “Wow, this is a sharp statement from Young Hunter about who they are as a band. Seven years on from their last record, I feel precisely the same way. That is so say, time is an illusion and the best art exists outside of it. As regards this one, I’ll just be happy it got released at all, regardless of how long it was in making that happen.
