Showcasing an angsty, unsettled indie rock with dark post-punk and heavier inclinations, Denmark's
Yung
made their international debut with
A Youthful Dream
in mid-2016. The quartet spent the next nearly five years preparing the follow-up, with bandleader and main songwriter
Mikkel Holm Silkjaer
citing members' varied musical tastes as a challenge in finding the right balance of noise and tunefulness. The resulting
Ongoing Dispute
, their full-length debut for the
PNKSLM
label, does succeed in homing in on a consistently hooky, distorted, and dissatisfied sound. The album launches into grudges with a driving, rambling borderline dance-rock on "Autobiography," an uptempo track that has
Holm
mocking his guitar player, confronting a former mate, and ultimately asking for an apology "for the friendship you threw away." He's interrupted at times during the song by segments of churning, head-banging guitar unisons and, later, duetting, ultimately dissonant guitar solos that aren't quite able to see eye to eye. While the pace lets up for a wearier second track ("Lust and Learning"), the album's ringing, sometimes soaring guitar atmospheres and persistent urgency do not. Among songs with titles like "Unresolver" and "Dismantled" -- the latter track a vaguely trippy outing -- are the triplet-metered, droning "Progress" and "Above Water," a song that approaches something musically uplifting, if it, and by extension the album, never quite gets there. If emotionally unresolved,
does deliver on engaging hooks and rousing choruses, at least until that wistful outro, "Friends on Ice," which closes the album in a wash of chiming guitars and circular thought. ~ Marcy Donelson