Music Review: Recycled Youth (Volume One)

I once asked an honest, musically aware friend if it would ever be respectable to like Never Shout Never. His immediate text response: “No.” This didn't stop me from listening to their deep-feels-turned-to-rhythm tracks on runs or while composing dry academic papers, but was enough to prevent me from bringing the topic up with anyone again, friend or otherwise. Whereas other alternative rock bands like Panic! at the Disco or even Fall Out Boy can claim some more musical legitimacy in their songwriting and varied fan base, Never Shout Never has remained stuck in its rep as an angsty, but cute, teendom favorite.

But their latest album, Recycled Youth (Volume One)––their ninth and a covers album of previous Never Shout Never songs––is a step toward being taken more seriously. The album manages to pull old tunes together in a meaningful way under a cohesive blanket of melancholy. Whether or not someone is familiar with the often peppy sound of their past albums, Recycled Youth has a noticeably sad vibe. The darker and lower versions of the songs, especially on “On the Brightside” and “Robot,” smooth over some of the screechy factors in lead singer Christofer Drew’s voice that kept other catchy songs like “I Love You 5” and “First Dance” cringe-worthy. And even though the album takes songs from several different albums, Never Shout Never’s new style collects their songs in a light they should have been in all along.

Take “On the Brightside,” for example, the lead track. It slows down the original and gives it heavier instrumentation, violin and piano standing out instead of the original’s constant guitar. “Here Goes Nothing,” jumps on pop’s recent synth bandwagon, also toning down the guitar and Never’s trademark ukulele. It starts out almost ballad-like, with heavy beats sounding of Cartel, and drags its intense harmonies through the whole thing. “Lost at Sea” is also more dramatic in its precise harmonizing as opposed to the a cappella chants in the version that appeared on their album “Time Travel.”

“Sweet Perfection,” meanwhile, flips in the opposite direction; it’s a stripped down but happier version of its original, which was too heavy on drums and too rushed to fit with its obvious but gleeful lyrics, “And oh, sweet perfection / Won’t you hear my one confession? / I’ve been lost, but dear, I’m found.” “Trance-Like Getaway” also takes on a new meaning in Recycled Youth, becoming less of an echoey meditation and more of an acoustic one. It also adopts an andante pace to let you soak in the words, a feeling that’s pervasive right to the end of the album. There are no fast tracks, no dance tracks. Never Shout Never seems to want you to listen and be still this time.

The album overall seems smarter, more calculated and with a more appropriate sound for the way the songs are written. Lead singer Christofer Drew has said that there are plans in the works for two more of these re-vamps, with fan favorites taken into account. “The way I see it, a song is never completely finished,” Drew told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We just wanted to do our favorite songs and do it better than the original recordings. And this is sliding us into the new material.” The album is not terrific, and it’s not classic, but Drew is right in one sense—it’s the better way of doing what Never Shout Never has already done.