Behind the tenderness of teenage love that fills the 5 breakthrough tracks of Fred Roberts’ spectacular debut EP is an entire lot of catharsis.
The 21-year-old is prepared to like and to harm on Sound of My Youth, which makes for a compelling pay attention and an effort that couldn’t sound farther from a rising star taking his first steps.
Anybody who asks Roberts of his inspiration will instantly be instructed it’s Troye Sivan. Like all queer Gen Z adolescent, it was Sivan’s Blue Neighbourhood trilogy that marked a turning level for the budding singer.
These influences are nonetheless plain to listen to 9 years on and it’s not too bold to liken Sound of My Youth to the Australian’s coming-of-age launch.
The EP kicks off on the thudding ‘Runaway’. A full-blooded recounting of bumping into an ex on the bar, Roberts takes a deep breath and opts for battle over flight. “Individuals change, I’ve modified,” he chants.
The Chorleywood-raised songwriter retains the pop-rock manufacturing of ‘Runaway’ excessive for follow-up single ‘Say’. For followers of Phoebe Bridgers, Olivia Rodrigo and Nieve Ella, it’s a surefire winner.
On that observe, Roberts struggles between want and self-sabotage – “after I first felt desired by a boy, I clung onto that feeling, as I feared if I have been to let go, it could by no means occur once more,” he stated on launch. It’s an arena-sized flick that may be a spotlight of the star’s reside set.
The place ‘Runaway’ and ‘Say’ noticed the singer burst onto the scene over radio-ready hits, probably the most extraordinary moments on Sound of My Youth are available its emotional bed room confessions.
Emotional sucker-punch ‘Disguise’ is so intelligent in its easy storytelling that it prompted revered SiriusXM host Larry Flick to pen a Substack essay on a primary love he hadn’t dared share earlier than.
The observe tales Roberts’ expertise being saved as a secret by a associate not able to make their relationship public. “Do I want that I used to be someone else, somebody that you simply don’t want to cover?” the singer croons.
Above all, it’s Roberts’ songwriting that makes his debut EP so convincing. There’s one thing very Taylor Swift within the element of the darkish cinema rooms of ‘Disguise’ and there’s extra the place that got here from on EP spotlight ‘Naive’.
Listeners are taken to a yard trampoline underneath the celebs as Roberts displays on the innocence of past love. It’s a heartbreaking ballad whose tender guitar lets the singer’s vocals take centre stage.
‘Naive’ is the EP at its saddest however in Roberts’ pissed off calls of ‘how may I be so naive?’ is a willingness to really feel each inch of the heartbreak.
That’s the triumph in Sound of My Youth. What’s, basically, a heartbreak EP is delivered with such a dedication to the emotion that it’s a cathartic pay attention – and that feeling involves a head on the title observe finale.
A flick match to soundtrack the long-lasting tunnel scene of The Perks of Being A Wallflower, Roberts admits that “after all the things, I’m nonetheless dancing to the sound of my youth”. It’s a observe to roll down the home windows and crank up the audio system because it brings the EP to a detailed. After which press repeat.
