Album Review: Yung – 'Ongoing Dispute'

The difficult second album.

Yung return with their sophomore record, Ongoing Dispute. There’s the old saying of “the difficult second album”, and the Danish four-piece found it all too real. Following their debut, A Youthful Dream released back in 2016, frontman Silkjær admits that the band came off “every tour actually owing people money rather than having made any.”

Not only were Yung broke, but they had difficulty writing the follow-up. Writing started back in 2016, but it wasn’t until they took inspiration from Killing Joke and ‘Lust and Learning’ came into being, a jangly indie-post-punk anthem, that Yung felt they had a direction.

Despite the frustration and huge amount of time spent writing and recording the album, Ongoing Dispute seems to have paid off. It’s nine songs of melodic gloom for fans of Ice Age and The Wedding Present with a bit of an ‘American sound’ to it. Just listen to the opening track ‘Autobiography’ and it brings to mind The Replacements. ‘Above Water’ sums up the album as it appears to have a timeless feel to it – it’s perfect for now, but it could have been released ten, twenty, or even thirty years ago.

Words by Matthew Brocklehurst

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