On Under Stellar Stream Richard Youngs’ continues his evolution into an artist of considerable stature. He picks up where he left off on his last release for Jagjaguwar, Autumn Response, to build a collection of songs which have a power vastly disproportionate to their simple structures. Under Stellar Stream has a hypnotic quality which will entrance all those who meet its gaze.

The music is minimalist but fascinating in its unusual textures: a distant hum, a squeak of guitar strings, short bursts of static, a bell swinging in the breeze, air blowing through an accordion…at one point someone clearly thinks about playing a kalimba. Any musical melody tends to be borne by piano – a fuzzily-recorded piano, full of soft, decaying notes. This enables Young’s voice to be the key element, and an element is exactly what it feels like: age old, of the earth, of great import. Songs hang on key phrases which he repeats like mantras, filling them with a sense of near-religious momentousness (although not to the extreme of a recent performance with Heather Leigh Murray which saw them singing one three word phrase for half an hour). The track titles “All Day Monday and Tuesday”, “Arise Arise”, and “My Mind Is In Garlands” form the basis of these strange hymns”, but more important perhaps than the literal (and probably highly personal) meaning is their role in highlighting a sense of being trapped within a history which is doomed to repeat itself. Youngs seems truly tormented, obsessing over the passage of time, with lyrics referencing a wait “for time itself” and “the arc of evolution”. The effect is remarkable and haunting.

Listen to “Broke Up By Night” courtesy of Jagjaguwar.