Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
In “All They Want,” the one-man band Heartour’s first single of the autumn season, the formerly New York-based (and new Californian) Jason Young takes the space pop-tinged rock of his previous releases and streamlines it into an even more surreal, intoxicatingly catchy sonic cocktail.
Though it’s a bit more refined than former tracks have been, “All They Want” is a surprisingly visceral blast of indie rock thunder, and considering the lackluster output that we heard over the last season from his competitors, calling it a breath of fresh air would be an understatement of epic proportions. Heartour centers everything in this new single on pure melody worship of the most erudite variety, sans the overindulgent virtuosity of a bygone era in pop music.
There aren’t a lot of acts producing the same kind of retro-infused heat that he is, and yet his stylish sound has a familiar swagger that makes it accessible to even the most casual of rock fans. I’ve been looking forward to his new work for a hot minute now, but after building up a lot of anticipation, I think there’s no question whether or not he was able to hit the mark with this performance.
The production quality in this track is superb, admittedly much tighter than what we heard the last time we took a look at the music of Heartour, and there’s a bit more attention paid to the relationship between the vocal and the guitar, which in itself yields a lot of textured contrast in the main harmony here.
“All They Want” has a lot of early indie rock elements tucked into the structure of its biggest hook, but it isn’t enough to tether the song to the revivalist movement that has been making a lot of noise in the American underground from one coast to the other in the last couple of years. This is as uncaged and explosive as “Brain,” probably my favorite single out of this camp to date, but it’s a step towards a postmodern side of rock n’ roll that Jason Young appears to be particularly adept at manipulating.
If this is just a sample of what his next LP is going to contain, then it’s fair to say that Heartour is evolving into a juggernaut of a solo project to put it quite mildly. Young commands our respect in this track with little more than a mighty melody and a firebrand fretwork that, as of October, goes unmatched in the 2023 pop lexicon.
“All They Want” is slick enough for the mainstream crowd and vibrantly rebellious in the tradition of the iconic indie singles that came before it, and that’s a combination that you just don’t find that often anymore. Despite a highly inflated (and often downright false) narrative that everyone is leaving California for the likes of flyover states ala Texas, this is a song proving there’s still a lot of magic taking place in the SoCal underground, and perhaps a bit more now that this New Yorker has made his way to the beaches of Venice.
Sabrina Wyrick
