Underground Youth

Originally from Blackpool but now based in Berlin, Craig Dyer radiates an old-world charisma, with his showy dark glasses and shaved head reflecting the blinding white lights from the stage at Rome's Monk Club. His musical project, The Underground Youth, brings to the Italian capital an intense show, poised between romantic beauty and abyssal darkness. As drummer Olya Dyer pounds the skins standing up, a modern-day Maureen Tucker, the striking bassist Samira Zahidi radiates post-punk pulses, almost in symbiosis with her long raven hair.

Rounded out by talented guitarist Leonard Kaage, Underground Youth take the stage around 10pm, opening the set with the dark-blues of "You Made It Baby", instantly setting a noir, cinematic tone. It's precisely this fusion of post-punk and cinematic lo-fi that has set the band apart and won them a devoted following across Europe. Otherwise, one might be tempted at first glance to write them off as a derivative mix of Joy Division and Velvet Underground, as on the following "I Need You", steeped in 80s wave. In essence, it's a reworking of so-called new romantic, as on the following "The Allure Of The Light", which might place the band within a sound already explored by groups like Echo And The Bunnymen or Jesus And Mary Chain.

But then there are intense, emotional tracks like "Juliette", which suggest a secret marriage between Ian Curtis and a gorgeous psychedelic girl. From the devastated melody of "I Thought I Understood" to the exotic noise of "Morning Sun", Dyer's band is a sinuous, elusive creature, able to slip effortlessly from pop to noise. A sort of avant-garde 2.0, certainly not built on a total break with the rules, but capable of making the listener relive certain feelings as if they were entirely new.

The set flows smoothly amid the enthusiasm of the crowd, through the psych rhythm of "Hedonism" and the Velvet-esque obsession of "Last Exit To Nowhere", driven by a rhythm section at peak tribal intensity. "Silhouette" veers into a black-and-white melodrama of gothic surf, while the vibrant "Alice" recalls the Smiths in its guitar arrangements.

Among the band's many influences are certainly The Brian Jonestown Massacre, almost paid tribute to in the mix of shoegaze, psychedelia and pop of the gorgeous rolling "Mademoiselle". Between repeated swigs of beer and several "grazie" said in Italian, Dyer launches into the opening lines of the apocalyptic pièce "The Death Of The Author", over a pulsing bassline torn open by electric guitar heading toward the territory of the best Nick Cave. "Free Palestine", Craig shouts before stepping off before the encore.

In communion with the audience, having stepped down among the crowd and lit up in white, the singer leads the band through a kind of closing medley, kicked off by the synthetic post-punk of "In The Dark I See" and closed by the Lou Reed-like dirge of "Hope & Pray".

The audience leaves the venue satisfied, after roughly an hour and fifteen minutes of the show, as if suddenly catapulted into Rome's damp cold after a long, hypnotic embrace.

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