The Yearlings

THE YEARLINGS  - LUCK

Reviewed by: Noel Mengel 

“This duo have been delivering finely crafted albums since 2002, hitting a creative high with 2014’s superb All The Wanderings, the kind of album which seems to get better and better with the years.” 

The Yearlings have returned with new record, Luck, which finds them working with the great Australian songwriter Lucie Thorne as producer, recording with the superb rhythm section of drummer Hamish Stuart and James Haselwood. 

If you have enjoyed the sound of Thorne’s albums you will be dazzled by these 10 tracks, the kind of music that you could imagine played at an intimate show on a farmhouse verandah, or coming from the speakers providing the company on a backroads drive to town on a Saturday night. 

Sure, there is still some folk and country at its core, but this is the kind of music that sits well in a record stack with others who go their own way in that world, from Emmylou Harris to Lucinda Williams, Neil Young and The Jayhawks. 

If you are not a music-maker you might find it extraordinary that this is music made by a quartet playing together for the first time at the recording session yet sounding like they have known each other for a lifetime. 

But since we are mostly music-makers here, it is nice to be assured that these are the kind of creative sparks which can happen precisely because the musical partnership is so new: when muscle memory – all those gigs, miles, rehearsals, recordings – collide with high-quality songwriting. 

For a sample, check the searing Donnie Darko, where blackbirds eat the soul and the black dog nips at the heels. “Gonna drive ’til the river runs dry,” Chalklen sings, “Gonna drive ’til the red light comes on.” 

Piercing the darkness like a headlight is Parkinson’s incandescant electric guitar, searching ahead in a blaze of pure tube amp tones and reverb, the kind of thing Neil Young finds in his finest moments out on the ranch with Crazy Horse. This is guitar-work beyond mere melody and technique, a pure connection with emotion. When the song concludes after six minutes, it feels like that crisp, perfect sentence at the end of a short story that leaves you wondering what happens next. 

The opening Downtown is sweet and soulful, the voices of Parkinson and Chalklen locked in tight together; Stuart’s brushes up high in the mix. It’s a sign too that while melancholy is on the road ahead, there is always joy to be found in the music. 

Gone are the Days is a song of loss and healing, Parkinson’s electric guitar tones building like a storm around Chalklen’s aching vocal performance. 

Luck — mostly bad – inhabits this story of hard times on the land, a silvery baritone capturing the loneliness that life can bring; Angel’s Feet puts Parkinson’s voice up front; Old Friend reflects on lost friendship with some of the sweetest female-male harmonising you will hear this year. 

Walking on the Wind is a mid-tempo tune with the kind of irresistible groove and shimmering guitars once found on Chris Isaak’s finest recordings. 

The Yearlings have always delivered lessons in understated songcraft, but they sound refreshed here in the company of Stuart and Haselwood. The road is still dusty, sure, but these wide horizons are something else: richly detailed songs delivered with maximum emotional effect.