Eating/sf is featuring a recipe adapted from the New York Times for Maple-Olive Oil Granola. It is crisp, crunchy and full of taste with a distinct floral olive-oil aroma. Today’s pairing, the Young Sinclairs are a Roanoke, Virginia-based folk/pop-psychedelia five-piece. Their music is jangly, upbeat, lyrically clever and melodically infused with the spirit of late 1960s-pop rock. Their tunes, shimmering and feather-light, are draped in reverb and nostalgia. And although they’ve released a number of self-released CD-Rs since forming in 2005, The Songs of The Young Sinclairs is their first proper full-length collecting cuts from 5 of those self-distributed records with a number of newly recorded tracks thrown in. It is a vinyl-only affair that has spent a lot of time on the platter of my turntable ever since I received my copy. I can say without hesitation, it is one of the year’s best kept-secrets.
Featuring echo-laden vocals and sun-drenched instrumentation, the concise album opener “Darling” sounds like it could be an artifact of the late 1960’s baroque pop era a la The Byrds. Much of the album is gentler and more purposefully restrained than a number of the other new artists presently trafficing in reverb-drenched 1960’s pop, which gives The Songs of the Young Sinclairs a more definitive purpose. But that isn’t to say the Young Sinclairs are afraid to let go a little. And in fact, they do let loose and explore their boundaries on the rollicking “Blessed Blackness,” the jangly “Tough Face”, and the floor-board tapping, country-tinged “Everything I Do Is Wrong.” As previously mentioned, it is vinyl only, but you can pick it up at Kindercore.
Head back to eating/sf to read Kasey’s recipe for Maple Olive Oil Granola.
