Australian band Cedarsmoke have delivered an imposing and heartfelt single in ‘Being Young Is Getting Old’, a sobering and vivid elegy for the world in which our youth are growing up in.
Frontman Jon Cloumassis, whose whiskey-soaked gravelly vocals sets a yearning and poignant tone, says:
The song is about the downside of youth and being in your twenties. It began with the title which I liked because of the double meaning – it looks at how youth has its negatives and it also looks at how getting old is a constant thing. I think that like most things, it has its pros and cons which is what makes it an interesting subject matter to me.
The jangling and celestial 12 string guitar provides a soft bedrock for the vocals, with a mellotron adding a haunting air. The track assumes a Springsteen-like fable with its bleak and vivid poetry – I can’t compete with 30 year olds with six figure incomes – and yet there is a certain resigned ambivalence that blunts the underlying anger and frustration:
Haunting and evocative stuff indeed. The single is available to download and stream here.
