TECHNICOLOR DREAMS

For Yvette Young, music is medicine. But it hasn’t always been an easy path. The Californian virtuoso started out with classical piano and violin from the age of four but, by the time she was in high school, the pressure of orchestral life and playing piano competitively had driven her to a dark place – she ended up in hospital after a stress-related breakdown and eating disorder led to a heart problem. But in that bleak moment, Young discovered the guitar. Teaching herself how to play from her hospital bed, she began to develop her remarkable tapping style, while discovering a healthy and positive creative outlet for her talents.

This aspect of her relationship with the guitar came to the fore as Young worked to finish Technicolor, the second LP by her math-rock band Covet. Once again, Young was dogged by difficult personal circumstances. Again, the guitar provided a cathartic escape route.

“It was all such a blur and I was going through something difficult at the time,” she tells us from her home in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Writing was difficult because I wasn’t in the mindset for it, and was pretty bummed out, but making this