On the surface, this third album from Doncaster’s cartoonish pop-punk upstart Dominic Harrison, AKA Yungblud, suggests a moody makeover. Firstly, it’s self-titled – artist shorthand for the “real me” – while the cover art swaps 2020 chart-topper Weird!’s kooky cosplay for a simple image showing a crestfallen Yungblud. Thankfully, it’s all a pose, with the oversized, Billy Idol-esque opener The Funeral featuring slurred lines such as: “I’ve got a fucked up soul and an STD.”
That single careens into Tissues, built around a sample of the Cure’s Close to Me for extra goth points, with its skyscraping, lovelorn chorus an album highlight. Breezy, big-chorused guitar pop suits Harrison’s elastic vocals, even when his lyrics let him down, as on the 1975-aping, toxic masculinity diatribe I Cry 2 (“It’s alright mate, I cry too”). Sweet Heroine lazily links love with addiction, while the 90-second Die for a Night aims for metaphysical poetry but ends in a shrug of “I don’t know what I’m talking about”.
Yungblud’s on safer ground with Cruel Kids, bolting big, bratty melodies on to all-caps anthems for teenage outsiders. This may be billed as his serious opus, but clearly growing up is boring.
