All Music Guide REVIEW: BRIDE OF THE ASYLUM finds Damien Youth's music essentially unchanged since the late 1980s. In most artists, that would be a bad thing. In Youth's case, that's a good thing -- first, because his music was good to begin with, and second, because hardly anyone's heard any of it, still, ten years down the line, so it's unsatisfying to accuse him of being stuck in a rut. The fidelity is clearer than on his cassette-only DON'T DISTURB THE GARLANDS, and he's wise enough to stick to his fairly minimal approach. That means acoustic guitars, a bit of extra instrumentation and percussion, and some background vocals, instead of selling out into a full rock sound. The songs and arrangements are still varied enough to make it avoid homogeneity of texture -- not an easy thing to do when essentially rock artists choose an acoustic format. Most important, though, the songs remain melodic and lyrically eccentric in a way that's interesting, not self-consciously weird or silly. And it's still hard to believe this guy isn't British, so much does it evoke the mood of Robyn Hitchcock crossed with Donovan , without being uncomfortably derivative of either. Despite the gentle ambience, there are some really cutting words here, as on "Hermaphrodite Jesus," enough to get him in trouble for blasphemy even in the 1990s if it got played on certain radio stations. On a different wavelength, "Katie Called Me Lucifer" is fey British-style folk-rock at its most fetching. (4 1/2 stars) -- Richie Unterberger