18-year-old Surrey musician George van den Broek, aka Yellow Days, has just released his debut album, Is Everything Okay In Your World?, featuring a guest appearance from Rejjie Snow on ‘Lately I’ and Nick Walters on ‘The Tree I Climb’. You can even bag yourself a free download of ‘So Terrified Of Your Own Mind’ here. The LP is crammed full of auditory treats, but one stand out is ‘Nothing’s Going To Keep Me Down’, which will transport you to the front-and-centre of a Yellow Days live performance with those breakdown beats, lo-fi guitar riffs and impassioned, unpolished vocals. It’s bluesy, raw and filled with notes of melancholy and desperation, which makes the title evermore brilliant. As a running theme with the whole album, ‘Nothing’s Going To Keep Me Down’ appears to relate to the emotional and mental state of depression, fatigue, loneliness, heartbreak, the struggle of everyday life and simple faking it. Yellow Days single and by extension the album, asks more questions than it answers, certainly a characteristic of blues through the ages, and harbours a mature-beyond-his-years exploration of everyday mental health. - HT