Young Professional- When the world ends it’ll be over before we can say what we wanted to say

Young Professional

When the world ends it’ll be over before we can say what we wanted to say
self-released; 2015

3.8 out of 5

By Jamie Robash

Young Professional has made been making music under various monikers over the past several years. Born and raised in Oakville, Ontario and now living in Toronto, the singer-songwriter has made his best solo record to date with the rather garrulous When the world ends it’ll be over before we can say what we wanted to say. The album was inspired by the newness in Young Professional’s career, mainly his move to Toronto, his new roommate and his new girlfriend. This feeling of happiness not yet tarnished by time oozes out of every pore on When the world ends it’ll be over before we can say what we wanted to say.

The album is a very model solo effort as Young Professional wrote, played, recorded and mastered all seven tracks on the album using mainly Garage Band and some Logic. And though those tools aren’t necessarily anything out of the ordinary for use on DIY releases, what is notable is that Young Professional played every instrument on the album, which includes acoustic and electric guitars, synths, banjo, mandolin, hand drums, tambourine and programmed drums.

For all of these instruments When the world ends it’ll be over before we can say what we wanted to say is a very low-fi record. It’s noticeable from the opening acoustic chords of the folky ballad “Missing Person.” Though the song is acoustic based a programmed soft synth loop begins to follow along in the background adding an unexpected yet totally welcomed complexity to the song. “Wallflowers” stays truer to indie-folk with its bare bones banjo riffs and ambient and multilayered vocal tracks as does the quiet and haunting “Maybe May.”

There are a few minor missteps found on When the world ends it’ll be over before we can say what we wanted to say. “Leave the Girls out of It,” though intriguing in its title, the song sounds largely incomplete. In much the same way “Fades” also seems to exist in an experimental form, and falls into the now cliché vein of the sad self-deprecating soft whispers eked out over slow strummed guitar.  

When the world ends it’ll be over before we can say what we wanted to say seems a shining example of so much of the DIY scene these days. When it shines it shines and when it doesn’t it doesn’t. And it also shows that when you are the arbiter of your own music, you can sometimes let things slide when you should be chastising yourself to do better. With a little paid studio time and a no nonsense producer, Young Professional could make a career out of this. 

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