Where does the time go, eh? It seems like only yesterday that Tweedle John and Tweedle Ed bounded onto our TV screens, underage and under-rehearsed, barely able to wrap their twin heads around a melody so simple a small amphibian could croak it out.
Now on their third album, their second commendable Eurovision attempt and their umpteenth sold-out tour, Jed A and B are all grown up and ready to start singing about love, lust and a couple of other things that would have made for a painfully awkward album back in 2009. The Grimes boys turn 21 this year, so songs about candy and space travel naturally give way to something a bit more familiar to the non-Tween demographic.
Young Love is a 12-track journey through a first significant love affair, although it’s never quite clear who’s love affair we’re hearing about. For the first time, John and Edward sing individual lines and verses instead of crooning together in one shapeless, meandering honk, but they still appear to be serenading the same woman, which is nothing if not an episode of Maury waiting to happen.
Nonetheless, Young Love is full of terribly good examples of that kind of arms-wide, windswept, melody-driven cookie cutter pop that we all remember from the turn of the last century. The credits are reveealing: Jedward’s team of American and Swedish writers count signature songs by Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and N*Sync among their past successes.
While the air-punching sounds on Young Love’s are unshakably pre-Facebook, Jedward’s lyrics are firmly rooted in the technological age that’s been so good to them. “Give me your digits baby, please/ Can you tag me in a picture?/ I can make your status read, ‘I wanna get witcha’,” ‘they holler on the irresistible, dial tone-led ‘What’s Your Number’.
The adorably psychedelic ‘A Girl Like You’ is another standout, along with the slightly Guetta-fied ‘Luminous’, the hopelessly energising ‘Happens In The Dark’ and a childlike, whistle-led track called ‘Gve It Up’ that’s simply too fun to detest. There’s even a shoopy, Beatles-y moment on coming-of-age number ‘All I Want Is You’ that doesn’t sound spectacularly out of place.
That’s what there is; now I’ll tell you what there ain’t: filler. Granted, Young Love is about as groundbreaking as a bad-tempered YouTube commenter (who, by the way, will have trouble poking holes in its wide-eyed, feelgood shtick) but it’s sweet, clever, and that most important of words in the age of attention deficiency, consistent. What’s not to love?