Capital Youth – ‘Lemonade’.

Capital Youth – Geneva, Switzerland.

Garage Rock and Garage Punk are styles of music you don’t hear too much said about in todays contemporary mainstream and underground scenes. The bands exist, quite obviously so but are often lost on the ears of those who simply dismiss it as loud, abrasive, punky guitar pop.

Garage Rock in particular stands as one of biggest influences on Rock music in general since its inception in the late 60’s and with its tuneful argumentative brother Garage Punk not far behind, the two make quite a pair.

This is where the Geneva based Capital Youth come in. The band seek to make abrasive Punk sing-a-longs with playful distortion and convulsion inducing tempos from the off and with ‘China Town’ you get just that.

When you think of Garage Punk,  you almost always instantly think of The Hives and quite rightly but in this case, as much as fans of The Hives will be pleased, I’m more inclined to stress the comparison to the recently returned Punks, Dead To Me.

‘Where You Are’ is very much classic of the genre with it’s melodic lead guitar flirtatiously contrasting to the cantankerous garage-grit with 1:41 – 1:51 proving rather ear-wormy.

‘In A Maze’ glides by with the same well played hooks and driven simplicity that makes this EP what it is. It’s nothing overtly impressive or technical or ground breaking for that matter and it doesn’t need to be.

‘Moving On’ sees more the sweet crooning guitar leads once more sending to the mind to the likes of The Hives’ earlier material, Dead To Me and FIDLAR. Capital Youth save the best until last however, with ‘Without You Standing’ unequivocally as the strongest on the EP and a perfect closer.

‘Without You’ is the most driven, the most up tempo and the most Punk-Rock on the release. The (albeit slightly) darker guitar tone and chord progression contrasts and contends very subtly but also beautifully with the raspy, mischievous aesthetic propagated by the four previous tracks. ‘Without You’ is in laymans terms a fun song, from a fun band on a debut EP that is really rather fun.

Lemonade was released by the band’s self-owned DIY label, Roosevelt Records.

Find all things Capital Youth:

• For updates, head to Facebook.
• Lemonade is available on bandcamp, iTunes and Spotify.
• Roosevelt Records can be found on Facebook, with an Official Website and bandcamp page on the way.

#StayFresh