'We try not to waste people's time' declares vocalist Katie Eastburn. A truer statement was never made. Young People is not a band to do anything lightly, so rest assured that the irony in the title All at Once is not accidental. Far from offering their product immediately on a pleasing melodic platter, Young People demand as much from their audience as they do from themselves. A casual listen is insufficient to appreciate the album's raw power, communicated through carefully chosen pop licks, instrumental experimentation and haunting vocal melodies.

The result is a complex melange of timbre, style and influence. Imagine what would happen if the lovechild of Miles Davis and Sonic Youth met Nina Simone at her most desolate, in an underground New York bar. You're probably in the same ball park as Young People, but no analogy can adequately explain their peculiar magic: a sultry ambience which is unrelenting till the final note has evaporated.

The band started life as an LA threesome: Katie Eastburn and Jarrett Silberman with the now departed Jeff Rosenberg. Their eponymous debut of 2002, championed by John Peel was shortly followed by their second, War Prayers, a year later. Eastburn now lives in New York, with Silberman in LA, a trans-American collaboration described by Eastburn as 'two solitary impulses which have met, and feel synergistic with each other'.

The album manages to be a curious mix of both nihilism and elation. There is undoubtedly an underlying darkness, more penetrating than in previous albums. The conception of the album coincided with Eastburn's brother's military service in Iraq and lyrically, ventures into moodier depths with words adapted from Native American and Indian poetry. This mood was deliberately cultivated in production by recording the demos on hand-held recorders to maintain a muffled quality. However, when all hope seems forsaken, the atmosphere is punctuated by spontaneous outbursts of happiness.

'R and R' opens the album with a haunting piano ostinato, closely followed by the equally ominous guitar-driven 'Dark Rainbow' and 'Your Grave'. Sandwiched between these, however, is the tribal 'Forget' with its Joni Mitchell-esque melody. Never an album to be tied down to one particular mood, the almost unbearable white noise of 'On the Farm' gives way to the two most uplifting songs on the album. 'F' is a calypso-inspired moment, complete with handclaps and tambourine, while the driving piano of 'The Clock' betrays the duo's preoccupation with early Broadway and film noir. 'Heads Will Roll' hints once again at murkier depths, but interestingly, we are left with the country rhythms of 'Ride On', suggesting that all is not lost.