YOUTH Mixtape

This mixtape was put together by a young person of 15 years, the aim of it to shine a spotlight on young talent each artist aged below 18. An excellent idea, one I support totally, and give these guys time, and a few of them can be properly great, but a large percentage of these covers suffer from a bit of overthinking, I’m afraid.

This is certainly the case with track one, Teenage Reverb’s cover of the Backstreet Boys’ ‘Get Down’. Unfortunately, like their name suggests, this one’s just smothered in reverb until hardly a note remains recognizable of the original – I shudder to do it, as it makes me sound old and condescending, but I hope it is an age thing, and once they learn some restraint (reverb is only to be used sparingly of course) they can make some lovely music.

Faux Fur do a great cover of ‘Working For The Weekend’. But again children, what is it with just drowning everything in reverb and burying the vocals? Let ‘em come through, you sound great!

KYNAN’s cover of ‘Purple Rain’ is very good though. Great voice, great use of the beats, and keeping recogniseable elements from the original to bring the song very much into the techniques of this century. Well done. Very well done.

Wonder Bear do a very cute cover of ‘This Little Light of Mine’, it’s echoey and the layering of the vocals is quite a cool effect, although a little overused. It feels like they heard it and decided it sounded good, so put it in far too many times.

I don’t care what anyone says, I LOVE Alvin and the Chipmunks, I think they’re SO cute, and I love ‘Christmas Don’t Be Late’ – Catwalk’s version feels a little bit strange without Alvin, Simon and Theodor’s trademark squeaks, and, unlike the original, it lacks a lot of the excitement and impatience of waiting for Christmas day, but it is still very cute.

So all in all, this is a promising start for these youngsters, if these guys are anything to go by though, the future is swamped in reverb (and on the internet for free).