The Yearning

In crafting his orchestral pop compositions around the youthful calamities and overwrought emotional upheavals typical of early girl groups and 1960s chamber pop, British songwriter and producer Joe Moore formed the Yearning alongside vocalist Maddie Dobie during 2012. The project's initial full-length effort, Dreamboats & Lemonade, surfaced in 2014. With the 2020 release Only When I'm Dancing, the duo adopted the sonic palettes and studio approaches associated with the 1970s.

Moore first shaped his wistful studio works in the vein of Bacharach and the Beach Boys, enlisting the teenaged Dobie to interpret his material and assembling an array of session players in support. The Yearning initially emerged through a sequence of shorter releases on Elefant Records, beginning with Jukebox Romance in 2012 and continuing the next year with Still in Love. A proper album followed in 2014, rendered in the luminous harmonies and retro textures of Dreamboats & Lemonade. The more-melancholy Evening Souvenirs appeared in 2016, incorporating the Cotswold Voices choir on select tracks. Presented as a mini-LP, Take Me All Over the World arrived in January 2018, mere days after Dobie's 21st birthday. Effortlessly shifting toward strings-tempered disco and '70s pop-soul while remaining centered on affairs of the heart, the Yearning issued Only When I'm Dancing in September 2020.