Classics: Young and Sexy – ‘City You Live In Is Ugly’

Luddites would like to argue that’s no serendipity in digital music — that without the musty smell of vinyl record sleeves and decaying covers to flip through, there can be no true discovery. This has never been true: from the earliest days of P2P, clicking through another user’s library looking for intriguing album titles, to Last.fm recommendations, there’s an infinite number of ways to find something special. I found Young and Sexy’s “City You Live in is Ugly” on Rdio by following one related link after another in an indie-pop rabbit hole. The 2002 track is the best song from the forgotten band’s Stand Up For Your Mother, an impressively hi-fi release that draws on Belle & Sebastian and Saturday Looks Good To Me and predates the boy-girl twee theatrics of better-known songs to come like “Young Folks.” It has what might be considered a perfect melody. So consider: serendipity lives.

(Buy Stand Up For Your Mother for $6.99 on Amazon)