Melbourne-based one-man band Dylan Young — who goes by the stage name Way Dynamic — has released his anticipated third album, Massive Shoe. His most commercially successful release by a considerable margin, Young maintains his characteristic mellow, optimistic vibe whilst expanding his musical and lyrical repertoire.
The opening track, ‘People Settle Down’, is most reminiscent of Young’s past work, a simple two-chord song with jazzy production and soft harmonies that contain enough surprises to keep the listener engaged. His skilful lyrics combine the childlike — a comforting dream of living in a home with his “best friend” — with the cryptic and unsettling — an elephant with an “evil appetite.” The next two tracks, ‘I Was the Dancer’ and ‘In Review’, are similarly laid back, introducing a Hawaiian-sounding electric guitar to the palette.
With ‘Miffed It’, the album shifts in a new musical direction. This is the most melancholic track on the album, with introspective and tender lyrics about lost love and time punctuated by a simple, folky guitar riff. ‘Mercy Town’ and ‘My Visit (To Hell)’ are the most distinctly ‘60s-sounding tracks on the album, with rich production, piano and whimsical lyrics reminiscent of early solo McCartney projects such as Ram.
Young’s songs often draw on pop history, but without succumbing to the cult of nostalgia emerging in the modern folk scene. The song ‘The Others’, otherwise an acoustic-based track, is broken up by a bridge which incorporates a distorted synthesiser, smoothly blending old and new. Young’s drumming is also a point of intersection between his taste for the modern and the classics: it is often harsher than the song itself, echoing modern R&B and hip-hop sounds.
In a 2026 interview with the Guardian, Young spoke of his philosophy on learning from the pioneers of the 1960s and 1970s, specifying that it was not “the sounds of those records that inspired me, but more what the technological limitations of that time forced me to be like.” Way Dynamic does not settle with the sound palette of any particular era; it borrows the best elements of old and new to produce music that has a distinctly timeless quality to it.
The final two songs, ‘They Said’ and ‘Evening Star’, are a bossa nova-esque ballad and a brighter, folky tune, confirming the album as a dazzling collage: understated, at times almost quaint, but enriched with varied musical influences, powerful lyrics and beautiful harmonies. Massive Shoe is a quiet triumph.
Photo by Daria Kraplak on Unsplash
