Full Review: The Young Veins – Take A Vacation!

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It may seem weird that there’s an exclamation mark in the album’s title, ‘Take A Vacation!’, until you find out The Young Veins includes Ryan Ross and Jon Walker, formally of Panic! At The Disco. With promise and potential definitely in place, reality sets in and this record is no vacation.

Cutting to the chase, if every track was as poignant and well crafted as “Cape Town,” “Defiance” and possibly “Heart Of Mine” this album would be a grand slam. Instead, focus is lost and somewhere along the way boring sets in, big time. The saving grace, if there is one, for songs like “Change” is that it’s short. Only “Everyone But You” comes in over 3 minutes in length while most stick to under 2 and a half.

The Young Veins aren’t Panic! and shouldn’t be compared to them, however, the title track, “Take A Vacation”, is one of the few which has enough similarities to see the connections. Most songs come off as trying too hard to recreate this ’60’s/’70’s beach pop. These are supposed to light and breezy, summer songs, but by the end of the album that’s not what I was thinking about.

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Album Reviews 7/6/2010

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3.5 out of 4 stars

You can’t give a band a bad rap because of the history of it’s musicians. If you ignored the fact Ryan Ross and Jon Walker were once a part of Panic! At The Disco, you would be able to appreciate Take A Vacation! and it’s attempt to reintroduce 60s’ pop. Upon first listen, the record isn’t as dramatic as Panic!’s dive into trying to be The Beatles a few years back (remember Pretty Odd?). Instead, Ross shines as his vocals draw comparisons to The Zombies’ Colin Blunstone and when tied with nifty melodies and hip-shaking bass lines, the debut is a worthwhile listen that just may secure a spot in your playlist. That is until the sun runs away and summer is over.

Download: “Heart Of Mine”, “Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won’t”

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Terrific Twitter Trio of the Week

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The Young Veins' Jon Walker
@iamjonwalker

Why You Should Follow: Last summer, Jon Walker and Ryan Ross left Panic! at the Disco to start their own band, the Young Veins. This summer, they're heating up Bonnaroo, touring with Rooney and Black Gold, and getting ready to release their anticipated debut album, Take a Vacation!. Expect bassist Walker to tweet through it all, since he already tweets about pretty much everything -- from avocado sales at the local grocery store to Hanson's performance on The Tonight Show. He often posts song lyrics from classic tracks like "War" by Edwin Starr and "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan, Chuck Norris jokes, and Twitpics of Scrabble games and recording sessions.

Best Tweet of the Week: This behind-the-scenes shot from the filming of an upcoming music video.

(source, where you can find the other two featured artists)

Review: The Young Veins - Take A Vacation!

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Every once in a while a band come along that mines The Beatles for inspiration and many of them fall flat. That's not the case with The Young Veins, a band that wears it's influences on it's sleeves, which in this case is a great thing.

Last June, Ryan Ross (Guitar/Vocals) and Jon Walker (Bass/Vocals) quit Panic at the Disco citing "creative differences." When Panic released the song 'New Perspective,' the differences were quite clear, the other members of Panic were happy to retread into their infant stage and keep releasing the same kind of garbage from their debut album. Ross and Walker on the other hand had much better ideas. They went on to form The Young Veins and in the process have created an album that recalls "Help!" with a little bit of early Kinks for good measure.
( continue reading )

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Album review – The Young Veins

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Since when did Ryan Ross become Ray Davies Jr.? The former Panic! at the Disco dude showed shades of his Kinkiness with the outta-left-field 2008 album Pretty.Odd. (Fueled by Ramen), with the once-reigning emo-electronica kings traipsing into Village Green territory. Whereas critics kinda dug the dramatic new direction, the teenyboppers who bought A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out in droves cried foul.

So did band mates Brendan Urie (vocals, assorted instruments) and Spencer Smith (drums). They seemed more keen on retaining the sound that made them “wet dreams for the webzines”; Ross and bassist Jon Walker embraced the lemonade and pot brownie flavor of the Topanga Canyon and formed The Young Veins.

Take a Vacation! (One Haven Music) – well, the love affair with extraneous exclamation marks hasn’t faded – is a well-constructed hodgepodge of surf-rock ballads (“Dangerous Blues”) and lo-fi finger-poppers (“Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won’t”). Though bands such as Best Coast are garnering mad props for their vintage sound, The Young Veins’ recordings sound anachronistic. The “everything old is new again” notion worked on Pretty.Odd. because the production was rich and modernized. But Vacation may be a little too Nuggety to appeal to Panic! fans. Still, you’ve got to admire the incredible evolution Ross has made in the past five years. We’re eager to see where he goes next musically.

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The Young Veins, 'Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won't' -- Song Premiere

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When Panic at the Disco dropped the exclamation point from their name, it was surely intended to signify a newfound maturity, or at least an evolution from the their emo-drenched beginnings -- remember, the band became famous long before its members could even legally drink. But a mere change in punctuation wasn't enough of a revision for songwriter-guitarist Ryan Ross and bassist Jon Walker. They wanted a new start entirely, which is what they got when they dropped out of Panic at the Disco last summer in order to launch the Young Veins.

One year later, they have a new album to show for it. 'Take a Vacation!' drops on June 8. Note the return of the exclamation point. As for the name of the lead single, 'Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won't,' a comma is the only punctuation necessary as the song itself is a bit more mysterious than a direct emphatic declaration. "We wrote this song while being held captive in France," Walker tells Spinner. "It could be about a few different things, but it's probably about love."

That might explain some of the ambiguity. Musically, the song is a throwback to vintage Californian pop music -- it's a summer classic in the making. Check it out below.

(streaming at source)

Alternative Press article

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( large image behind cut )

via theyoungveins, scanned by pinkichan.

Transcription:
The Young Veins

Having met the Beatles...

Remember in 2008 when Panic! At the Disco let their inner Beatlemaniacs run wild and free on Pretty. Odd.? That was nothing compared to the Fab-ulous spirit of Take A Vacation!, the Young Veins' infectious debut. Led by two former members of Panic! (Ryan Ross on vocals/guitar and Jon Walker on bass/vocals), they get things started with the psychedelic, Beatles-as-filtered-through-the-Monkees "Change." By the time the title track rolls around next, they've moved on to folk-rock with chiming electric guitars, some old-school organ and the album's most contagious vocals. "Cape Town" is "Please Please Me" as Phil Spector would have done it. The Veins switch it up throughout the disc--they push an acoustic guitar to the front of the mix for a moodier spin on folk-rock, and "Dangerous Blues" sounds like British Invaders attempting an R&B ballad. If you're looking for some indication that this was recorded after 1966, good luck with that. But give the kids credit for backing it up with hooks that do their sainted frames of reference justice. (ONE HAVEN; onehavenmusic.com) Ed Masley

Rocks like:
The Beatles: Rockband
Fountains of Wayne's Welcome Interstate Managers
Locksley's Don't Make Me Wait

Rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars

miscellany

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In an interview with the Like, the following came up:

What bands/artists are you into at the moment new or old?

Tennessee and Laena are obsessed with the new MGMT record. I’m obsessed with The Young Veins debut album which comes out around the time ours does. We’re really into the Tammys, The Shangri Las, The Supremes, the Zombies, and all the Joe Meek stuff at the moment.

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The Young Veins have released a live video with studio audio for Take A Vacation!, viewable here or ( behind the cut )