After more than fifteen years of tours and album releases, a folk music fan knows what they’re getting from The Young Uns. Rich three-part vocal harmony? Check. A strong political compass pointing due leftwards? Check. Raucous traditional sea shanties interspersed with heartfelt originals? Check and check.
Even their new material is lodged firmly in the familiar. After breaking new ground in 2019 with their narrative stage show The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff, the trio have returned to safer footing with their new album, Tiny Notes. Its music fills the setlist of this, their latest tour. Like 2017’s Strangers, the new album consists of real inspirational stories, of hope and love in the face of suffering, reimagined as original folk songs. However, while Strangers’ songs varied in sound from the upbeat Ghafoor’s Bus to the tragically beautiful Be The Man, this new material is more samey. As the first act of their show plays out, one tender ballad follows another, and another. Lead songwriter Sean Cooney front-loads each with backstory, described in eager and exhaustive detail. The shanties succeed in breaking up the routine, but the tonal contrast is jarring.
All that aside, The Young Uns remain a band that are almost impossible to dislike. The harmonies are as gorgeous as ever, and the band’s stage presence is as comforting as a warm blanket. Cooney and his bandmates, Michael Hughes and David Eagle, banter like the old friends they are, the atmosphere amiable and inviting. As a result, Eagle’s irrepressible sense of humour feels neither forced nor out-of-place. It’s also hilarious. The impromptu stand-up between songs is side-splitting enough- his music hall piss-take of the recent Gary Lineker drama at the BBC takes it to another level.
Above all though, The Young Uns remain likeable because they’re just so damn sincere. Cooney’s eyes shine with eagerness as he sings of a teenage suicide prevention activist, a blinded child who met and forgave the man who shot him, and a trauma surgeon coming face-to-face with ISIS militants. No waver of insincerity blemishes his voice as he eagerly invites audience members to submit more stories to them for the next album. Even in Eagle’s comedy, there thrums a beating heart of humanitarian care. By the time they’d finished Three Dads Walking, sung for a trio of activists who lost daughters to suicide, my own mother was almost in tears sat next to me. So yes, almost all these new songs sound kind of the same. And yes, almost all follow the same emotional arc. But it’s a good sound, and a good arc, and when its creators believe in it this much, it’s hard to find much fault in it.
If you’ve heard The Young Uns perform before, you know already if you want to see their show. But if you haven’t, and you like a good hopeful tear-jerker, you’re in luck. They’re playing at Towersey in August- and you only get to see a great band for the first time once.