Nashville resident Conner Youngblood crafts melodies through a wide range of obscure instrumental arrangements. Often centered around a specific place of natural landscape or human connection his songs embody delicate, nuanced moments in nature and the introspection of these moments. His debut album ‘Cheyenne’ features no less than 30 different instruments – a harp, a bass clarinet, a tabla, etc – all of which are played by Youngblood on a record featuring no guests. Instead it’s simply him and an engineer he’s known and worked with since he first started releasing music back in high school. The result of this lifelong process of collecting and playing instruments means ‘Cheyenne’ is a record that’s rich in atmospheric, organic sound. Sitting somewhere between the more low-key elements of The Band (who Youngblood wrote a thesis on while studying at Yale), the beautiful melodics of Moses Sumney and the Grammy nominated songwriter Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, this latest collection of songs feel embedded in the fabric of life – Youngblood examines what makes us human, the earth, translating his findings back into music. Ultimately, positioned between the sincere folk-like melodies of Elliott Smith, the pure sonics of and instrument switching ethos that’s reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens, ‘Cheyenne’ presents Youngblood an accomplished songwriter. While there are a few distant key figures grounding his sound Conner's music carves out a future narrative that is very much his own with unexpected instrumental parts and obscure melodies a step outside the current landscape.
