Youbet [CD], Youbet, CD

The best teachers never stop learning. They listen closely, stay curious, and let what they discover shape how they guide others. On their new self-titled album as Youbet, longtime music educators Nick Llobet (he/they) and Micah Prussack (she/her) proudly act as both explorer and guide, sharing three-dimensional musical sculptures so confidently and esoterically their own that they couldn't have been released under any other name but Youbet. Created in motion and shaped between long stretches of touring, the album reflects a moment of ecstatic possibility and grit. Both sharpened and expansive, Youbet grows from the confines of home recording and "bedroom pop" into something sturdier, louder, and unmistakably the band's own.Llobet relocated to New York from Denver in 2013 and forged initial connections in the local scene, while creating Youbet and writing two albums, but it wasn't until meeting Prussack in 2022 that they discovered a different level of musical connection. When the duo started playing together, they quickly realized their uniquely shared musical language and eagerness to learn from everything, connecting over a vast array of musical influence and their own practice of teaching. The duo began experimenting musically, and their subsequent year of touring led to a new, more refined sound.That depth of surprise and expansive warmth radiates from album opener "Ground Kiss," a late-night existential query written when Llobet found themselves adjusting to living alone after the end of an 11-year relationship. The song encapsulates striving, failing, and rebuilding amongst clouds of plucked Big Thief-esque glow and bursts of distorted frustration. Elsewhere on the album the duo's vast influences - everything from The Beatles, Bernard Herrmann's dizzying Vertigo soundtrack, flamenco, Japanese noise-rockers Boris, and more - weave in and out as the band crafts their own musical language. Co-producers Katie Von Schleicher and Julian Fader round out the album, the former adding synth glisten and the latter a drum backbone hammered into place by Prussack's bass.Youbet demonstrates Llobet and Prussack's ability to weave beguiling musical and lyrical expression, pushing and pulling at the resulting mesh. What emerges is an album that doesn't just break free of the artists' former constraints, but reconfigures them into something sturdier: Llobet and Prussack's collaborative language capable of holding contradiction, growth, and connection all at once.