Category: Young Marble Giants

“There really ought to be more bands like Young Marble Giants, which doesn’t mean that there ought to be more bands that sound like Young Marble Giants. They came out of the nowheresville of Cardiff, Wales; they didn’t particularly have a local scene to buoy them up, or a niche to fit into. What they had was an aesthetic that was totally theirs, a sound and style that essentially had no antecedents. Play any six seconds of any YMG song and you’ll know exactly who you’re listening to, and probably be thunderstruck by its unsentimental beauty of tone. In a year when everyone was trying to make a big noise– but isn’t that every year?– YMG switched tactics, forcing their audience to lean in to hear them. It’s not simply that they were quiet, although substituting a drum machine that sounded like it had a thick quilt on top of it for a human drummer was a radical move at the time. They weren’t even all that quiet– they were just in love with negative space, and their lyrics were so much about things unsaid that the space was formally appropriate. …”
Pitchfork
Guardian
W – Colossal Youth
Genius
YouTube: Brand New Life (Live), Colossal Youth (Live)
YouTube: Colossal Youth -Full Album-

“‘Final Day’ is so brilliantly simple and slight, a pop song running just over a minute and a half with gentle guitar plucking, hardly audible keyboards, Alison Statton‘s wallflower vocals, and the constant wheeze of what sounds like a theremin, that you couldn’t be faulted for wondering why most twee pop bands in the Young Marble Giants‘ wake have ever bothered. The remaining three songs, ‘Radio Silents,’ ‘Cakewalking,’ and ‘Ode to Booker T.’ rate well with the remainder of the trio’s spry, spare output. One of the brightest moments in the Rough Trade label’s singles discography, the entirety of Final Day was eventually appended to the CD version of Colossal Youth issued in 1994 by the Belgian label Crepuscule.”
allmusic
Discogs
YouTube: Final day, Radio Silents, Cakewalking, Colossal Youth