Conner Youngblood
Cascades, Cascading, Cascadingly
Missing Piece Group
I’m on my tenth listen to Nashville-based Conner Youngblood’s September release.
I confess that the first five didn’t gel. I couldn’t wrap my brain, which is currently deep in an Americana/Country era, around what I was hearing. I have an adventurous ear, but I didn’t get this. I knew there was beauty in it. There had to be. It had to be me, just needing more time.
Time, in fact was the sparkly wand. After I sunk in to Cascades, Cascading, Cascadingly, a title that perfectly reflects the artist’s deep dive into learning multiple languages, my own barriers broke down and found the sweet spot.
In Youngblood’s bio, I read this about the album: “lyrics blur the lines between fact and fiction, toying with magical realism and outright abstraction in a variety of languages.”
Magical realism being a love language, I found the gateway to understanding where Youngblood is trying to take the listener. Written and recorded in his Nashville bedroom, Youngblood cashed in on both his language studies and a strong need to experiment with familiar and unfamiliar instruments. He often composed while looping sci-fi and horror films, the same way some need white noise or ambient music in order to sleep.
The beauty in this album began to rise once I let go of preconceived biases on what a song needs to sound like. I developed those biases over time. When I was deep into the Cocteau Twins or Brian Eno catalogs in the 1990s, the guard rails and kid gloves were completely off. Youngblood’s record encourages the listener to ignore the caution signs and look out past the edge.
“From an Ocean, to a Lake” is an introduction to this journey that I resisted the most. Its cinematic intro rolls into a rhythm ripe with synthetic accoutrements, but once I found the lyrics, I found the grounding I needed. There is poetry under what sometimes comes across as icy melody. The lyrics are what brought the warmth. Younglood really does understand language: nuances, phonemes, the tranquility of not-quite-understood phrases.
A standout track for me is “Blue Gatorade,” written about “giving and getting… letting in and letting go” according to Youngblood. His gear was stolen after a show in Denver, and he bought completely different equipment instead of replacing apples for apples or pedals for pedals. The sounds on this track were born from experimenting with the unfamiliar — a forced unfamiliar that gave birth to beauty.
“I’m sweating that/ and it’s clouding up my eyes…”
“Spanish is the loving tongue,” according to Bob Dylan. “Solo yo y tu” isn’t going to contradict that. This piece has a gorgeous Radiohead meets Sigur Rós tone. Melancholy and up to interpretation, I can’t imagine the sentiment “it’s just me and you” painted in a more appropriate language.
Closing with the dreamy keyboard Instrumental “Cascades,” Conner Youngblood finds a place in this writer’s stubborn brain that is looking for patterns in song — a question and resolution. There isn’t always a resolve. The dream can leave and enter with this album, translating to something different each time. Relax into this one. I hope you don’t need ten listens, but the process is often where the layers begin to peel. I expect Conner Youngblood is on the tip of a wonderful era as he explores the unfamiliar and invites us to come along.
