Dylan Pacheco is an Austin-based performer whose debut EP Youthful Exuberance is a compact listen and alluring exploration of '70s singer and songwriter influenced indie-pop. His music is as welcoming as it is unassuming, enabling you to sit with him, submerged in thought. Half realized ambitions and momentary panics escape his lips and pass through the strait between your ears like sand through a sifter. Unlike so many prospectors who made their home in the American West before him though, Dylan often hits paydirt. The careful chord progressions of "Weak Ankle" are appropriate to the song's subject matter, recounting the embarrassing and frustrating immobility that accompanies multiple bone fractures. A song whose detached depictions of convalescence makes it clear that Dylan is nursing an injury to his heart first, and a broken leg second. The woozy, bend and wave of "Boy Meets Void" is surprisingly assertive in defying the existential dread that tails most of us like a lost duckling throughout our day. The EP closes with the bright and easy dirt-rode stroller "Parvo" which feels far more indebted to Thin Lizzy than something written from the vantage point of a back-porch overlooking a tallgrass field, where a precocious mutt chases butterflies, and then its own tail, has any business being. Youth might leave you, but a good record will always be by your side. Will Dylan Pacheco's Youthful Exuberance be such a companion for you? You'll have to spin it to find out!
