Alien Health＜Colored Vinyl＞

Yung frontman Mikkel Holm Silkjaer, aka Holm, began writing the follow-up to his solo debut, the Raymond Carver-influenced Why Dont You Dance (not released until early 2022), in late 2020. Deep into struggles with loneliness and isolation at the time, both due to pandemic sheltering and to living on his own in Copenhagen, he was having trouble even listening to music when he again turned to literature, this time finding inspiration in the writings of exiled Hungarian author Agota Kristof and her themes of wartime alienation. While working on this batch of material, he also temporarily returned to his childhood home in Aarhus, Denmark (where he wrote his earliest music) to stay with his mother. When it came time in December 2021 to record the very personal, embattled collection of songs that emerged, he changed up his approach in the studio, tracking the songs together with his backing band -- with no overdubs -- while also notably trading his effects pedals and amp for a Marshall stack. The resulting album, Alien Health, is a louder, grittier, more visceral set that occasionally drifts toward punk, as on the exasperated "Shake" and the churning, infectious "Lose the Shoes," the latter a ruminative, two-and-a-half-minute, fleshed-out Ramones-like bop with a backing chorus of "Life changes, ooh-ooh-ooh" ("But me and this room remain"). Before that, though, Alien Health gets underway with a snarling rocker of a title track about watching one friend dole out bad advice to another. Holm turns his attention to music itself on songs like "Coherent Strategy" and the relatively more spacious and jangling "Sleepless in Your Arms," in which he compares the arts to a lover. There is one drum-less ballad on board, the drunkenly murmured "Street Light," but across Alien Health, messy emotions are reflected in imprecise attacks, impassioned vocal performances, and rattling guitar tones and reverb that, together, somehow both capture a Zeitgeist and seem to defy the digital era (in the best way). ~ Marcy Donelson