About time too. I’ve been waiting for this album for about six years, and finally it has come. Youthmovies have done so much since then, yet this album is an excellent representation of what they can achieve.
It is a true show of their quality that they are still around after all this time. I forget any feeling of impatience or frustration immediately after the long and slow rumbling beginning of ‘Magdalen Bridge’ and the subsequent glorious breakout. There is no mistaking that parts of Good Nature are a challenge and sometimes a struggle to listen to. But alongside moments like that gorgeous beginning, the exquisite ‘If You’d Seen A Battlefield’ – an absolutely superb accomplishment of a song – the poppy, upbeat ‘The Naughtiest Girl Is A Monitor’, the epic ending to ‘Last Night Of The Proms’ and the sweet ‘Archive It Everywhere’, they don’t matter. In fact, they make Good Nature even more of an awe-inspiring feat.
Youthmovies are delicate, thoughtful, challenging and totally original within their genre – they do not try and use shallow gimmicks to do something new but rely on their skilful song-writing and technical ability to create songs that on their own contain as much variation as most decent indie albums. Good Nature has ten of the beauties, each worth commenting on; but alas, word limits dictate I must end here. That’s probably for the best, as my mere words cannot do Good Nature justice. This will be one of the best albums I ever own.
Pick: If You’d Seen A Battlefield.
10/10
Great review. Despite waiting impatiently since the release of 'Hurrah!' for a full length album, and occasionally losing the faith at some poor live shows and the constant reworking of new songs, this album delivers time after time. It's a joyous masterpiece. From the explosion of good feeling in Magdalen Bridge (probably featuring the most upbeat brass section in a song I've heard since Penny Lane) you know you're on to a good thing. Brave, melodic, brilliant - best album I've bought in a long time.