{"product_id":"haunted-youth-the-boys-cry-too","title":"Haunted Youth, The - Boys Cry Too","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn \u003cem\u003eBoys Cry Too\u003c\/em\u003e, Joachim Liebens abandons the fragile, bedroom-pop innocence of Dawn Of The Freak - a debut that has since earned cult status back home - in favour of something far more confrontational and emotionally charged. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the towering eight-minute opener ‘in my head’ to the closing track ‘ghost girl’, the album lets go of restraint in favour of something more raw, blending fragile melodies with distortion and aggression to create a sound that feels both intimate and explosive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I was a kid on Dawn Of The Freak,” reflects Liebens today. “It sounds almost like nursery rhymes to me – everything is so fragile and childlike, like a cry for attention.” He pauses before breaking into a wide, Cheshire Cat grin. “And now I’m angsty and kicking in doors.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eBoys Cry Too\u003c\/em\u003e certainly feels like a more fiery and red-blooded record than Dawn Of The Freak. While you can lose yourself in ‘wake up’s icy morning-after-the-night-before regret, or the propulsive optimism of the New Order-like ‘i hear voices’, the mood is frequently one of anguish and aggression. Take ‘murder me’’s goth grunge thrash, or the ground zero annihilation represented in instrumental epic ‘falling to pieces’.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I very much felt like a boy on this record. The last album was more androgynous in that respect, but this time I was really in touch with the male side of my emotions,” explains Liebens. “The first half of the record is basically how everyone sees a boy when he’s heartbroken: he puts his walls up, he’s paranoid, he’s angry, he’s aggressive. But then the second half is this whole other story – it’s vulnerable,” he continues. “I want to show the vulnerable part of men and boys and celebrate it instead of making it this whole stigma that’s been going on for so long.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s a wide emotional spectrum reflected in a change of instrumentation for \u003cem\u003eBoys Cry Too\u003c\/em\u003e, with live drums and guitar coming more into focus ahead of the layers of sun-bleached synths that characterised Dawn Of The Freak. The shadowy ‘castlevania’, for instance, is described by Liebens as “the perfect triangle of Nirvana, Alice In Chains and My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet despite its squalls of guitar noise, Liebens says he was largely listening to hip hop artists during the record’s competition, citing emo-rap outlier Lil Peep as a key influence as he crafted his own set of lyrical signifiers. “The lyrics in a lot of non-hip hop music try to bring resolution, but it’s so much more powerful to have these lines that people just instantly engage with,” he notes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor all the killer lyrics on the record that grab you by the scruff of the neck, it was crucial for Liebens to leave space in his writing for the listener to impart their own experience into the songs. \u003cem\u003eBoys Cry Too\u003c\/em\u003e may have been born from his own pain, but he wants it to resonate with other people’s lives.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Play It Again Sam","offers":[{"title":"White LP","offer_id":51023172305174,"sku":"RMX-62119","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":51023172337942,"sku":"RMX-62120","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0839\/7750\/2998\/files\/1631636d2ac1761aac093d3cdf1df364.png?v=1770802204","url":"https:\/\/resident-music-uk.myshopify.com\/products\/haunted-youth-the-boys-cry-too","provider":"Resident Music UK","version":"1.0","type":"link"}