Young Hunting :: "Baby's First Steps"

LA's Young Hunting, with the forthcoming debut record, Hazel, recently offered a preview in the form of stand-out, "Baby's First Steps". A dark, folk-rock track, "Baby's First Steps" roots itself in a slow-drive chorus before growing increasingly metastatic and dangerous on a guitar-driven closing movement. The initial progression represents a sort of funeral-pop, a measured and troubled guitar line full of elegy and lyrics like, "you look up at the window as the water rushes down/you look through your reflection into the darkness that surrounds you." But, if Local Natives made this type of sorrow just light enough to lift, Young Hunting chooses the same methodology, oozing treble on the silky harmonies in the song's chorus. The final offer, the halting title lyric is as dark and pretty as any Thom Yorke melody, twin visions of a Los Angeles caught somewhere between hopelessness and hope.