Young Guv - Guv I & II

Young Guv is Ben Cook. Ben Cook is a songwriter, a dedicated and prolific songwriter of rare talent. The real deal.

GUV I, and its sequel GUV II, are two collections of pop music _ written and recorded by Ben Cook throughout the summer of 2018 in New York City. The double LP series is a collection of profoundly poignant and infectious pop tunes with choruses you'll never forget and lyrics whose dry wit and understated acuity will knock you flat.

Think of the contemporary guitar music that meant something to you in the last 18-odd years. Ben Cook has probably had something to do with making it or influencing it. Think of No Warning, which he fronted since he was in high school in the 90s. Think of Fucked Up, for which he played guitar since 2006, the aesthetically omnivorous, thematically ambitious punk-rock-deconstructing band-like entity that, unlike the bulk of their contemporaries in the late-2000s festival-circuit indie-rock boom, no one is ashamed of having associated themselves with.

But, for all that, the only place to hear music that belongs entirely to Ben Cook has been under the umbrella of Young Guv, or Young Governor, or Guv, or whatever he may at any given time have been calling the vehicle that, since 2008, has delivered a steady supply of singles and EPs, plus two previous full-lengths. Sometimes Young Guv songs have guitars and British Invasion harmonies; sometimes they have synths and modulated voices. But always they have choruses you'll never forget and lyrics whose dry wit and acute depictions of intense human feeling never fail to knock you flat.