“There's always a point in every single important event in one's life, where what could be, becomes what could have been. That's what these songs are about to us, that beautiful futility.”
- Roger Hodgens, songwriter for The Poems
Take the cream of the UK indie-pop vanguard, put them in a Glasgow recording studio with some first time vocalists and achieve the sublime. Full of chiming acoustic guitars, sweeping vocals and grand arrangements, The Poems wear their gentle melodicism proudly on their world-worn sleeves. Guests on ‘Young America’ include Belle and Sebastian’s Isobelle Campbell, Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake, Del Amitri’s Justin Currie, and The Proclaimer’s Stuart Nesbit.
'Young America’, The Poems’ debut Minty Fresh album, is written around that point in life where youthful anticipation has become something altogether different; something still sweet, though newly tempered by reality. And perhaps richer in its newly revealed complexity.
The Poems come from Scotland, a country which has seen its popular culture influence- and then in turn been influenced by- popular American culture. As founding member Roger Hodgens describes, “The Scottish psyche is what The Poems are exploring in this album. ‘Young America’ is a metaphor for that melancholic futile desire to escape that is so important to the Scots- especially emigrants that left for America looking for something. Something that maybe they really didn't expect to find.”
The songs on ‘Young America’ are songs of yearning. A desire or vision which becomes an addiction is the eventual 'arrival' is almost an afterthought: the bittersweet reality of true discovery.
“Optimism is such a powerful force that any realization of one's wishes can only end in disappointment,” Hodgsen, the father of 2 young children, continues, “At the same time, Oscar Wilde once said ‘youth is wasted on the young.’ He was wrong. The young use youth best. We should learn from them and lose the cynicism...in this, I am a believer.”
THE POEMS are Robert Hodgens (songwriter of Postcard Records/Sire Records legendary group The Bluebells ), Adrian Barry (The High Fidelity), Bobby Paterson (Love and Money and producer of Primal Scream’s “Velocity Girl”), Vocalists: Kerry Polwart and Amy Ogletree (fun fact – Amy’s father was the drummer for Simple Minds)
