Ben Cook’s musical CV is nothing if not varied: a member of Canadian hardcore bands No Warning and Fucked Up and penner of pop-punk anthems for Sum 41, he also claims to have worked as a ghostwriter for Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. We perhaps shouldn’t be surprised, then, that this solo project sounds absolutely nothing like any of the above: instead, it focuses on a jangly indie-pop sound that recalls C86 and Big Star (especially the echo-laden power-pop of Crawling Back to You). What elevates Ripe 4 Luv beyond mere pastiche is Young Guv’s desire to branch out: Aquarian sounds like a slow jam recorded underwater, whereas the smooth 80s soul of Wrong Crowd is written from the perspective of a wrongly accused man writing to his wife from jail.
