A look at the Introspective Reflection of Dylan Pachecho's "Youthful Exuberance"
First off, a personal PSA on depression.
What stalls me out as a professional writer isn’t rampant house parties in The Hills where I show up in a silk tiger print gown and dine on fine coke and grilled shrimp. I’m not too busy hang gliding off St. Bart and I don’t find myself drinking rum and orange juice at 11 a.m. searching for inspiration (usually). My tango is with the low-level distortion of depression, a grey overcast fuzz that camps and clouds focus and doesn’t have the manners to drift out to sea and dump its contents in the ocean.
This is an EP review for “Youthful Exuberance” by Dylan Pachecho, but because I can graffiti my Squarespace site with complete freedom, it’s also a ventilation system for my brain dampened in a smothering, suffocating humid storm drizzle draining my drive – alright, too much alliteration.
This is a mental health public service announcement:
An important aspect of being self-aware and depressed at the same time is that you can choose to try. What that means is every day for the past week I’ve sat in front of a blank Word document and written about 800 words total of gibberish. In between, I get up and do dishes. I do wash. I go for a run in the woods. I read a book. I play Parcheesi against myself on the couch. Anything to feel like movement in a positive direction.
When you feel like you can’t move and bed is the place where you lay down to drown, I encourage you to maintain hope and keep trying. And when you feel like you’re stuck and treading water for months and exhaustion follows you and you see no end, don’t hate yourself, and keep living. You will endure. I write this for myself as much as I write it for you. It doesn’t mean you’ll be yourself in a minute. It means you’re willing to call or text someone and talk about it. It means you go outside and do something, even a low-key activity like staring off vacantly into a misty sunrise as “Mad World” by Gary Jules plays on a loudspeaker in the front yard. It doesn’t matter what – it matters that you remember that you’re worthy of life and love and all the drama that comes with it.
Your brain, cycling negative energy on a closed loop, is going to tell you you’re in this fight alone. You are not.
Appreciate yourself. Reach out. You will endure.
Moving on - right now I sit cradling the new EP from Dylan Pachecho, the coveted record I anxiously waited for in the record store parking lot, as I violently banged on the store window at 5 a.m., foaming at the mouth and yelling “Open up in there – I’m a’fiendin’ for new music and If you don’t unlock this door, then I’ll bite your mother and fight your children!”
Wouldn’t that be exciting?
Unfortunately, all I’ve got at this stage is the artificial screen sensation of holding a phone with Soundcloud in my hand, but Dylan Pachecho is still a gorgeous name for an artist and he’s a DIY songwriter from Austin, Texas who creates “weirdo bedroom pop”. His debut EP is called Youthful Exuberance, released October 30th. He recently released the second single, a song called “Boy Meets Void”. Since I like to gorge on music the way a lion pack gorges on a cute baby giraffe, I’m gonna go ahead and give an advanced review on the whole EP instead of just the single.
Sound good?
This is a real-time reaction review on Youthful Exuberance by Dylan Pachecho. Pachecho says in an interview with VENTS Magazine that the first song “Negative Space” is about “acknowledging your own mental health”. I believe I just did that two paragraphs ago – now it’s Dylan’s turn.
Song One – Negative Space (Manic Panic)
I’m just gonna pause this seventeen seconds in already to say the synth/keyboard/keytar? riff sounds like a mix between The Flaming Lips and the song “Be Still My Heart” by The Postal Service. I’m not complaining. I dig. Let’s carry on.
I am on a road journey East to West on the I-10 watching the sunrise and the silhouetted plateaus of New Mexico pass by as I free myself from a toxic relationship. No, I’m walking through an urban park, attempting to cure apathy with each step through a mound of fall leaves. I’m – can’t I just enjoy the song, brain?
I appreciate the indie electronica blend. I’m not feeling a Matt & Kim level of electronic happiness, since there lies a slight undertone of introspective self-reflection, but it has a buzzing energy, and piano/horn breakdowns turn me on.
Song Two – Boy Meets Void
Okay, it’s lazy writing for me to simply compare a song to other bands, but the influences are so specific that it becomes relevant. The sound almost directly encapsulates indie in the year 2007. It’s like Death Cab for Cutie met The Decemberists at a coffee shop and Kurt Vile showed up and sat across the room and occasionally floated single chords across the room on paper airplanes.
I say it sounds like mid-2000s indie for a couple of reasons:
1. Dylan Pachecho’s voice sits in that lilting, slightly nasal but endearing range.
2. The whimsy. That’s the word I was looking for. The sound is filled with a kind of nonchalant, floating quality. Tinges of electronic keyboard interject themselves throughout, like the song is looking at you through the radio and gently prods you, saying “Hey now, let me make you feel better for two and a half minutes and forget that other crap”.
3. How do I say this…Pachecho’s has an accessible pop sound without being gimmicky. In the mid-2000s, Alternative radio is playing M83, Modest Mouse, Empire of the Sun. Now, “alternative” is like, AJR playing a kazoo, Imagine Dragons chanting arena choruses, the dude from Mumford & Sons singing with David Guetta. It’s music that sounds manufactured in a laboratory at Nickelodeon studios. Dylan Pachecho is music that can sound big without being false.
Song Three – Weak Ankle
The longest song on the EP at just under four minutes. Less chipper on the surface, a more profound sense of loneliness leaks through here and isn’t disguised by the steady beat and expressive cadence in his voice. Reflective, and for sure my favorite guitar riff of the EP.
Song Four – Parvo
I am really attracted to the calm strumming that grounds three of the four songs. There’s a definite Ben Gibbard influence in there, and that’s not a bad thing.
Nice! A guitar solo. It’s noteworthy to remember that Pachecho is a true DIY artist, so he likely edits his own music. The solos and transitions are mixed seamlessly and he doesn’t bludgeon you with too much of one thing. A little keyboard interlude here. A fuzzy warm eight-second guitar solo there. The EP is built with a light touch.
Song Five – Unkind
I know this is Dylan Pachecho’s music, not The Audio Glow’s music, but I’d love to hear more of the echoing female background vocals. I’m a sucker for haunting, nostalgic reverberating female choral vocals. Nothing like the swirling harmony of background melancholy to fade your thoughts back into the most bittersweet moments of your life.
That’s it. Youthful Exuberance by Dylan Pachecho out of Austin, Texas. The EP drops October 30th. Youthful Exuberance makes me want to remake indie-tinged movies and switch out the songs to see how it affects the moment. That scene in “500 Days of Summer” where Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel flirt over The Smiths – let’s try it with “Negative Space” by Dylan Pachecho.
I don’t consider myself a music critic – I just want to write about good music that makes you feel (see the Lil Dicky write-up or Julien Baker’s “Rejoice”). “Weak Ankle” by Dylan Pachecho makes me want to go back in time to relive all the greatest hits of heartbreak, and for someone else, the same song might sound like a catchy indie-pop driving song.
He’s put Introspection, Loneliness, and Carefree Folk-Electronic Escape in a room and created a space for all these elements of the sonic and emotional spectrum to work together.
Thank you in advance to Dylan Pachecho for sharing his EP write-up with my thoughts on self-care.
Take care of yourself. Reach out.
Go listen to Youthful Exuberance on Oct. 30th.
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