Young Marble Giants Issue #33

Colossal Youth (Domino)

By Jeremy Ohmes
Published: September 1st, 2007 | 12:00am

When post-punk bands like the Fall, Wire, and Gang of Four began popping off the punk Gizmo like a bunch of experimental, idiosyncratic Gremlins, there were none that rivaled Cardiff, Wales’ Young Marble Giants in pure quirkiness. By employing nothing more than a drum machine, guitar, bass, and the occasional organ, the trio of Alison Statton and brothers Stuart and Philip Moxham pushed the boundaries of rock music by completely pulling back, deconstructing music to a radical minimalism and influencing everyone from Yo La Tengo to Everything But the Girl.

Underrated and overlooked during their short tenure, Young Marble Giants naturally garnered a cult audience following their demise in 1981, and their lone album, 1980’s Colossal Youth, has been released and re-released several times: initially with 15 songs, then in 1994 with 24 tracks, and now as a three-CD collection compiling everything YMG ever did — including the band’s 1980 Peel Session. The record is a collection of sparse and spacious atmospheric pop; muted guitars and cozy organs play Ouija with roomy bass lines; soft, stuttering drum loops; and Statton’s forebodingly aloof singsonging.

“N.I.T.A.” features a haunting organ with a playful bass pushing it along while Statton casually pines for a lost love: “No rain outside but tears in my eyes / Out on the rooftop for a surprise.” On “Wurlitzer Jukebox,” over a ridiculously funky bass and criminally simple guitar, she intones like an anesthetized kindergarten teacher: “Fingers are pointed in my direction / Words fly around me, everyone’s chanting.” It might be the quietest urgency ever caught on tape, and its meaning is as enigmatic as this subdued monument of a record.