Shameless Promotions R’ Us Part 2

Do you ever spend your Saturdays lounging aimlessly, doing nothing with your day?

Do you ever wish you could be spending this time doing something productive, creative even? You know, maybe see a few bands, partake in the creation of spontaneous art?

Well if the answer to any of the above questions is yes, then read on ‘cos Trinity D.A.S., a bunch of other people and the boys at the Bernard Shaw have just the thing for you…

A Bunch of People Present “A Happening” at Toejam at The Bernard Shaw 5th April starting at 4pm. Free entry.

Wikipedia says “A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered as art. Happenings take place anywhere, are often multi-disciplinary, often lack a narrative and frequently seek to involve the audience in some way. Key elements of happenings are planned, but artists sometimes retain room for improvisation.”

What we are doing is a 21st Century version of what these spontaneous Happenings of the 1960s and bringing back the spirit of collectively creating an event based on the content of those attending.

This means, to begin with everyone receives a postcard on entry which they can draw on, modify etc in any way they like and then add this to the wall together with everyone else’s to form a unique piece of work formed by all present.

Following on from that, there will instillations of computer paper art, and new music videos by a selection of talented young directors. Then there will be interactive music and visuals which everyone can have a go with.

Then throughout the day while you lounge on bean bags, surrounded by lava lamps there will be live visuals, Fluxus art instillations and Live Music from….

Lomelindi (Live)

P.Dog (Live)

Roberto Pugliese (Live and Interactive Music and Visuals)

Attencton Bebe (acoustic covers of 90s dance hits)

The Sam Kavanagh Ensemble (Gypsy music 3 piece)

Plus many more

Followed by the A$$QUAKE boys ’til late

Trinity Ball 2008 Line up – Update

So as the tickets go on sale on wednesday, you may be wondering who is actually playing the Ball this year?

As far as I’m aware, the line up goes something like this:

Mark Ronson, Vitalic, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Lightspeed Champion, Boys noize, the Metros, Kavinsky, Reprazent, the Mighty Stef, the Coronas, Something happens, the Whip, Jamie Scott, the Spikes, Crazy P and Royworld.

According to his myspace, Boys Noize is also playing a set in Spy after playing at the Ball so I’m guessing he’s playing relatively early…

So you say it’s the hair of ghosts – Sunset Rubdown

I’m having a creative lull at the moment, and I haven’t blogged here in a while, so I’m going to take advantage of this little platform to get some essay rest and try hard to make more people love one of my favourite bands. Isn’t that what it’s all about? So here we go.

I had a nice morning this morning. I woke up really early (relatively speaking – I am a student and it is still Easter holidays) and ended up walking from Heuston Station down the quays into college. The air was fresh, the morning was buzzing and the gypsies were rude. These are the moments mp3 players are made for. So I drew my ageing Zen from my pocket, begged it not to crash again and got my scrolling thumb ready to go through a hundred and fifty bands ten times before finding something. But I was in a certain type of mood, so I went for Sunset Rubdown.

I will always love Wolf Parade, even if they never actually get the second album made, because they were the first 18s gig I ever saw (with a terrible fake ID) and I like Swan Lake, whose best songs are by Spencer anyway, a lot too.

But I still get the feeling that Spencer Krug’s real creative efforts, where he truly lets fly with everything he’s got, are in Sunset Rubdown. You can tell by listening to what he does with other people. Swan Lake is reasonably restrained stuff, even though his songs are really good. It’s a definitive side-project thing. And Wolf Parade, even though it broke him and Handsome Dan into the indie version of the mainstream, seems to stifle the tangential, image-laden, ADD quality in his songwriting and distill it into something approaching regular “rock”. That puts me off.

Random Spirit Lover came out around the middle of last year, but I didn’t get around to listening to it until December, and even though I don’t really believe in “growers”, it took another month again for it to strike me how brilliant it is. It’s hard to come to grips with it at points because it’s so dense. Between Spencer’s organ and piano (and sometimes both at the same time) and the snakey guitar lines, the unschooled drumming, the mysterious female backing vocals and the desperate, wordy lead vocals, there is always a melody somewhere trying to edge another one out. The pace quickens and slackens between songs, and even though everyone does it nowawadays, the way they go from quiet to loud and back can really get to you.

Lyrically (sorry Darragh), it’s really, genuinely great stuff. It’s like reading a Russian novel on top of incredibly dense keyboard-driven indie music. Except it’s not. The images are thrown on thick and fast. People are animals very often, God and religion shows up centrally and in cameo roles, people argue over whether things are just smoke or in fact Poseidon’s beard… and it’s never a tongue in cheek thing.

Some people seem to like the previous album, Shut Up I Am Dreaming, better. While that is also an incredibly good album, I have a feeling they’re not giving enough time to Random Spirit Lover. Either that or they have got ear wax backed up in their ears and need a syringing. Maybe. It’s possible.

They’re playing here on the 20th May, the same night as Broken Social Scene. But seriously, how is that even a decision?

Here is a video of them live (there are no speakers where I am so I have no idea how this sounds, but I wanted to use a video of a song off the new album and the YouTube comments said the audio quality is good – so it must be, right? I’ll change it later if not.)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRCrjEja8yU]

Asthmatic Kitty screening

Asthmatic Kitty records released the Encyclcopedia Asthmatica DVD earlier this month. It’s a collection of visuals set to the music from the various artists on their roster; Sufjan Stevens, My Brightest Diamond, Castanets, Rafter, the Curtains, Shapes and Sizes, Bunky, Half-Handed Cloud, and Liz Janes.

In this clip, artist Deborah Johnson matches some intense animation to Sufjan Stevens’ song, ‘Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake.’

Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.

This next video has some quality ass shaking going on. ‘Baba’ by Bunky.

I haven’t seen the rest of the DVD but judging by this, it’s definitely worth a look. You can pick up the DVD here.

simple but effective – muxtape

Muxtape lets you choose 12 songs to upload as a mix. It also lets you pick someone else’s mix and listen to it. It’s a nice change from last fm’s random same genre buzz. My only one negative point is that maybe people should be a bit more creative with the names of their mixes… It’s only a new site so I’m guessing the guys who developed it are still working on a few things to improve user interface etc. Still I think it’s a nice idea.

Conorworld in Canadialand

Canadialand Part I

So I have finally returned from my spur of the moment trip to North America. Back not long ago in December I kind of well, how can I say it, I kind of cracked and decided to drop everything and get the bloody hell out of Dublin. It was London I decided to go for a few days. However during the process of booking my flight to Blighty I got distracted by a cheap flight to Toronto. In the end I ended up booking a flight to London and then another to Canada in March.

Gypsy Punk in Canadialand

So I arrived on the Sunday the 3rd of March into Toronto where my good Canadian friend Steve picked me up at the airport by saying “So, would you like to go to see Gogol Bordello? Like right now?” Even after 12 hours of traveling I ended up watching what has been aptly described as gypsy punk. I had heard about these guys before and simply decided to discard them to the wayside of my attention. I’m sorry luv but I just don’t do that sort of thing. It was also around the same time that Madonna, the musical vampire that she is (she MUST be a vampire, just look at her aged 50) adopted them, robbed them from a T in the Park appearance to parade them in front of millions at Live 8 or whatever it was as her back up band. I don’t know why that irked me but I had no patience for them afterwards. But I couldn’t say no to a free ticket and the excitement of my first gig in Canada so it was straight to the venue.

It was kind of appropriate in some way that the venue was in the docks. Dark and seedy it seemed apt for a band like Gogol Bordello. It started off bad for me. Little did I expect that in Ontario that when a gig is open to all they have strict drinking policies. So we were shunted off quite briskly by security men to the drinking pen, like alcoholic sheep where we HAD to drink our alcohol there and not take it out. Conor don’t like that. SO it was from here that we got the beginning of the gig. As a band they look like a rabble of drunken Romanian labourers from the Caucesceu era at a dodgy wedding and sounded like the house band you would find at such a wedding. However it ripped through the crowd. And here’s me thinking all Canadians are calm, quiet and reserved. No, there goes a leg there, a plastic cup here and was that a sock? Hmmm. Odd. However somehow I was swept up in it as I apprehensively ventured out of the drink pen.

Gogol Bordello are undeniably a great band live but I just didn’t get it. Maybe I am not astute or open to such world rhythms blasted through some sort of musical particle accelerator that defines their sound at times. They are an acquired taste but a band that must be experienced I suppose sometime even if you’re not really into the sound of Moldovan wedding bands.

www.gogolbordello.com

Technologique

There are certain things you tend to associate with the French. Cutting edge music is not one of them. Or at least it wasn’t up until quite recently. Things look set to change, however, as France continues to dish up the newest and most exciting acts in the field of electronic music today. Looking at the lists of breakthrough dance acts of 2007, it’s difficult to ignore the predominantly gallic theme that’s overtaken clubland in the past 12 months. Tunes such as DJ Mehdi’s I am Somebody and SebastiAn’s Walkman have gained considerable play in clubs across the world while Justice’s D.A.N.C.E. not only enjoyed huge commercial success but was also remixed by dance maestros MSTRKRFT. If that doesn’t spell success, then I don’t know what does.

This is not an entirely new thing. France is, after all, home to Daft Punk, arguably of the biggest and most influential dance acts in the world and a group who are responsible at least in part for the huge rock/electronic crossover phenomenon of today. We must not forget Cassius or Alan Braxe either who have been producing funky house since the mid 1990s. Asides from them however, most people would have been hard pressed to come up with many other groundbreaking French artists had you asked them a year or two ago. Oh how things have changed!

Walk into any club tonight and you will more than likely hear the sounds of one of the Ed Banger crew pumping from the sound system. Frenzied yet melodic, funky but with a healthy dose of grit, today’s french electro is noisy, brazen and in your face. Characterised by ear splitting treble, tight edits and 80s glitz, the dance music of today is unmistakably gallic and undeniably cool.

Sick of big name DJs spinning shit tunes to crowds of people too mashed off their faces to even notice, the French have taken matters into their own hands and the result has changed the sound of dancefloors worldwide. A far cry from the four-on-the-floor house and techno of yore, today’s electro is considerably more innovative, drawing influences from rock, metal, hip hop and funk. The result? A sound that is uniquely french and extremely cool. The difference between the Ed Banger crew and superstar dance acts of the nineties is that this lot really don’t give a fuck. The label is their own and thus the artists have little by way of creative restrictions. In fact, they have none. Pedro Winters, AKA Busy P, founded the label in 2003 with the aim of creating the type of music that he himself wanted to hear when he went out. Long time manager of Daft Punk, Winters felt that electronic music had lost the plot a bit somewhere along the way and wanted to reinstate the fun, the noise and the colour in dance culture. He has been successful in doing so. Boasting acts such as Justice, Mr.Oizo, SebastiAn, Uffie and Feadz, Ed Banger is home to some of the biggest rising stars of today. And it’s not just the ravers who are taking notice. Indie kids, perhaps bored by the increasingly homogenised rock scene have started turning to electronic music, kicking off their converse in favour of high top fluoro trainers and finally learning to dance. This movement, dubbed “Rock ‘n’ Rave” by mixmag, is lead by DJs such as Erol Alkan, a fan of the Ed Banger lot since the very beginning. Alkan himself readily admits that his roots lie in the world of indie, and notes that today’s generation can’t relate to the rave culture of the nineties, as they simply weren’t there. This is where Busy P et al come in. Having grown up around trash metal themselves, they are now producing a bizarrely danceable type of cacophony, never heard before in clubs or indeed anywhere else.

The Ed Banger crew are innovative in that they are fusing genres which have traditionally been considered at opposite ends of the musical spectrum, and therefore creating a sound that is utterly unique. Fancy a bit of disco metal? Try Rainbow Man by Busy P. Feel like a little electro-hop? Check out Uffie and her mates TTC. Their music is recklessly fun, sticking two fingers up at the corporatisation of dance music and as such giving a voice to youth culture. Clubbers are tired of hearing the same thing over and over again. So are DJs. The music coming from France is now remedying this fatigue as dance music is returning to what it was originally supposed to be; music you can shake your thang to.

The strange thing about this gallic movement is that the French themselves are taking very little notice of it. Despite the fact that the Ed Banger and Kitsuné collectives are getting people dancing again on this side of Europe and indeed across the pond in the US, the French themselves are remaining unusually blasé about the whole thing. The reaction of both the French press and public towards their new wave of superstar DJs has been surprisingly lukewarm and the majority of Ed Banger’s parties are held outside of their homeland. Not that they’ve much to worry about though, having received extremely positive feedback from fans and critics alike in the press and in internet forums in recent times. These guys seem are on to a good thing and show no signs of packing up soon. With most of their artists due to release something in 2008 and their live shows gaining quite a reputation amongst today’s generation of clubbers, it seems these these guys have cracked the code and brought dance music back to its roots. They are making noise funky again, making sweat drip from the ceilings of clubs all over the world and amazingly, not taking themselves to seriously while doing so. Having already made their mark on the club scene in 2007, the French show no signs of retreating and luckily so. Clubs would be a hell of a lot duller without them.

Los Campesinos!

Neil Campesinos!, the guitarist in this year’s most hyped indie-pop band, chats about their debut album, their all-ages shows and the impending egomania.

A line on We Exhale And Roll Our Eyes In Unison runs “four sweaty boys with guitars say nothing about my life”. Do you think Los Campesinos! provide a healthy alternative to that traditional British indie outfit?

I really hope so. When we first started we were completely sure that we didn’t want to be that standard lad-rock post-Libertines, boring, stale…

The View!

Yeah! There are bands like that coming out every single week. We didn’t know what we wanted to sound like, we only had ideas of what we didn’t want to sound like.

You associate a lot more with North American acts. Are you complete anglophobes? Are there any British bands or scenes that do interest you?

Oh yeah, there’s still lots of awesome British bands. On the tour we’re doing we’re playing with Johnny Foreigner from Birmingham, and 4 Or 5 Magicians, which are bands that we all know. So we’re not anglophobes at all. British bands that get press attention aren’t particularly good. And all our favourite bands are American anyway.

Have you found your reception in North America has been more welcoming?

The North American reception has been quite surreal. They read the British press in a different way. I can’t fathom the fact that we can go to gigs in America and play to people who are singing all the words along. I guess the internet has done so much for us. It’s really amazing.

You’re signed to Arts and Crafts over there which is fairly prestigious. You have a similar sound and ethos to other bands on that label. Did that play a big part in you choosing to sign with them?

I think the A+C thing was down to a lot of bands on that label. We got to work with David Newfield who’s connected with Broken Social Scene. It all just came about without us looking for it. We never really considered getting on a record label in America. When the Wichita thing happened they were like “We’ll get someone to put it out in North America too. How about Arts and Crafts?”, those two labels have a connection. So we were like “Why the hell not!” It was very flattering. A year ago we were huge fans of that label, and now they’re asking us to be part of their roster.

Have you met any of the bands you like off the label yet?

Yeah! Several times. I bumped into Kevin Drew in Toronto at a gig. Well, he bumped into me, I didn’t even notice him at first! We’ve met them all now, they’re all really nice. David Newfield especially so.

Do you think he’s made a contribution to your sound?

Yeah without a doubt! He’s such more musically advanced than us in so many ways. He’s older than us, he’s got more experience. He has ideas that we’ve never even thought of, and this vast array of instruments, mics, compressors, everything. He’s exactly… a mad scientist, but he’d be like “Let’s try this through a 1940s vintage amp.” And it would work.

A lot of your influences, like Pavement, are distinctly lo-fi, but the Los Campesinos! sound is quite clean. Was that conscious?

We didn’t necessarily want to go for a clean record, but somewhere in between… I don’t think we could have gotten away with releasing a lo-fi record, although it would have been amazing. I don’t think it’s a super-clean mix, but I guess it is essentially a pop record. I think our first record almost has to be a pop record. It’s meant to be fun. Not mainstream pop, that American type of indie pop.

Is Los Campesinos! the dayjob now?

Yeah. We just graduated in June. To be able to walk out of university straight into this is a bit ridiculous.

I know it’s a bit into the future, but do you think you’ll be a quick-fire releaser of albums, or will you take your time over them? You haven’t been together that long, and your first album is already finished.

Well, Hold On Now, Youngster comes out in February, and we’ll pretty much tour this year out. The longer you drag it out, the longer you get to be in a band for, so I think we’ll take our time!

Milk it for all it’s worth! Release You! Me! Dancing! four times!

No! No! That is a no-no. It’s so frustrating when bands re-release their songs… If you’ve not made it by now, stop trying! If that first single you released three years ago isn’t popular now, it’s not going to get popular. Just go away and quit! If you’re not in a band where you want to release material because it excites you, why are you in one? Just to get famous.

Most of your gigs on the upcoming tour are all ages gigs, is it a fight with venues to allow this?

It has been, some venues make a big deal of it. I don’t know why, I’ve been to plenty of gigs where it’s not over 18s. Some people just don’t like it. Gareth (singer and lyricist) is quite active in getting our gigs all ages. I like it, it makes the crowd more exciting. When I was 14 or 15 at a gig I’d go mental, whereas if I go to a gig now I’ll probably just stand there, move my head and say “Yeah, this is good”.

Have you noticed at your gigs whether people are like that? Static, with some head-nodding thrown in, or have you been getting a more excitable reaction?

Actually, really amazingly, we’ve been getting really excited reactions. During our UK tour we had stage invasions. Generally we do get an exciting crowd. We find it weird, because when we go to gigs we’re not like that. We’ll just enjoy the music and not go mental. Maybe they actually HATE the music, that’s why they’re going mental.

That’s a fucked up way to look at it! Last time you played some of the band seemed quite nervous. I suppose it was the first time you’d been on tour. Do you think next time you’ll be more comfortable on stage?

Yeah I hope so anyway. That was pretty much one of the first gigs of a big tour. We’ll be much more comfortable now. We’ve much more songs to play. We’ve not even started learning them yet. They’re songs we played for the album but haven’t actually played live on the album yet, as a band proper. When we recorded the album we didn’t really play the songs together, as a band. We’ll see what happens in a few weeks, how that goes. When we realize we probably should have started practicing about two weeks ago. I think we’ll still be nervous, if a little bit more confident. But still nervous, and still excited.

Is Los Campesinos! a democracy?

Yeah, I guess it is. Everyone has differences at times, but most of the time it’s all positive. We do try and always agree on, say support acts, and tracklisting and album names. Gareth writes all the lyrics, Tom writes a lot of the lead lines and hooks, and we’ll all structure and arrange it and add our own parts into it.

Speaking of tracklistings, you left International Tweexcore Underground, It Started With A Mixx, and We Throw Parties! You Throw Knives! off the album. Did you want an album of mainly new material or were you just bored of the older songs?

We just really wanted to get a mix of newer material and material that had been released, and then songs people new anyway. So we left International Tweexcore Underground off the album because it didn’t fit in terms of the mix of the album and sonically… also we just liked the idea of a standalone concept single. We left It Started With A Mixx off because it’s an old song, and we’ve played it for a long time. Perhaps it wouldn’t fit on the album. And the same goes for We Throw Parties!. We still really like it, we’ll still play it live, but it was time to move on. I think we made the right choice.

How easily did the songs come together for the album, it doesn’t seem like you had a lot of time to make it?

I guess a lot of them, even the new ones had already been totally written, practised and demoed. We had more songs that we didn’t pick to go on the album. It didn’t feel particularly stressful at the time, even though we didn’t have a lot of time. We approached it quite sensibly. We knew how much we had to get done, so we focused and did it. Also, we were staying in a town where there was nothing at all to do, it was very dull, which meant we didn’t get distracted at all.

It is a “big” album, are you ready for the inevitable backlash against it? The band gets so much positive press, do you think it’ll be difficult when negative comments start appearing?

Probably. But so what? However it balances out, it doesn’t really matter anyway. We’ll do what we want to do. It all depends on how seriously you take yourself, and how seriously you take other people’s comments, and one thing we really don’t want to do is take ourselves too seriously. We’re well aware this bubble could break, in a year’s time people might not give a shit about us, and if that’s the case it’ll be sad. But we’ve had this opportunity, and none of us ever expected to do this, none of us aimed to do this. Every day on tour, I know it sounds really cheesy, but every day is exciting.

You’ve been getting an awful lot of press for a young band, how’ve you been dealing with it?

Just not thinking about it too much, not taking it too seriously… When you see yourself in magazines you like, say Pitchfork or Plan B that’s cool. If people ask to do an interview with us it’s really flattering that somebody cares that much, whether it’s national press, university press, or fanzines. It’s so surreal that people care at all what we have to say.

Do you think the ego will come eventually?

Oh yeah, hopefully. We’re practising it now… Not really, though, we never meant for this to happen, and it wouldn’t be fair to get too carried away with it.

Jens Lekman

What I first notice about Jens Lekman are his shoes. They are a marvel in shiny white leather engineering, tapering off to ridiculous pointyness like a pair of miniature concorde jets. Backstage in Whelans, as Jens speaks about touring in that melifulously well-spoken manner shared by male Scandinavians, they keep distracting me and I wonder if the tips of them are splitting atoms. You might, by now, be asking yourself why this piece is starting off with a digressive observation of the interviewee’s footwear as opposed to the standard snappy relevant quote to get things going. I could lie and tell you that I am a bisexual shoe fetishist and the sight of a dapper Swedish man in patent leather rendered anything he had to say about music completely irrelevant. Or I could admit the sad truth, and tell you that the battery in my recorder ran out after 2 minutes, meaning that the few shreds of actual quoted material I got from Jens are to be guarded jealously and sprinkled sparingly across this piece like dinky bits of white truffle on a posh omelette. But we won’t worry too much about the details of the interview that (mostly) got away, as there is much to relate about Jens himself and the festive gig he played later that night accompanied in part by Owen Pallett and a woman who looked freakishly like a young Britt Eckland.

Jens Lekman is a Swedish singer-songwriter who writes wry, lyrical and heartfelt pop that is polished and meticulously constructed like, yep, those shoes. A few things set him apart from the dreary masses of guitar-toting workmen that haunt this dreaded genre. One is the way in which so many of his original melodies are woven through samples cribbed from the vinyl he obsessively collects in second hand stores and flea markets. It’s something that could potentially be a clever parlour trick, but in Lekman’s hands the samples imbue the songs with timelessness, like he’s selectively dipping his lyrics into the huge collective vat of love and loss that informs so much great pop music. For me, this is best demonstrated in an earlier song of his called ‘Black Cab.’ Here, a heart-rending lyric of alienation from friends is married to the jaunty sounds of a 60s baroque pop song by The Left Banke, creating a finished product that leaves you grasping for suitable adjectives and wishing the term ‘bittersweet’ hadn’t become such a cliché.

There are two other things that mark Jens out from many contemporaries. They are his light and playful way with words and his rich singing voice, which sounds whiskey mellow and often belies his young age. I ask him about the way he plays around with words on his most recent album ‘Night falls over Kortedala,’ whether it comes naturally to him or whether he has had to work hard at it and sweat everything out? He tells me it comes easily to him, that he’s been fascinated by words and language since a very young age, and likes how the one word or phrase can mean many different things, “for example, the words ‘cigarette lighter.’ I’ve been fascinated by those two words for a long time and I think I used it as an image in maybe about five of my songs.” In Jens-speak, meanings of things do not only change across different songs, they often get turned inside out suprisingly in the space of a lyric, like when he describes how a crab crawls out of a shell he holds up to demonstrate his homelessness in the song ‘The Opposite of Halleluiah.’ Now, I’d say that some readers who have never heard Jens Lekman have gotten this far and are thinking ‘Cripes, pass a sickbag, cos this sounds like some sickeningly twee fluff.’ And there is no denying that, taken alone, or even on record, some of the lyrics might seem a tad affected and suited to only the sweetest palates. But when he takes to the stage in Whelans, twee and grating are transformed to dry and funny as he delivers his lines with the easy and expert timing of an old comedian. It’s something that really strikes me during his gig, this mixture of calm charisma and fluent banter that has the audience hanging off his stories and song lyrics. It is exactly like Johnny Cash playing San Quentin prison, but only if you replace the grizzled and murderous cons with fey kids in cardigans and wonky spectacles.

Talking backstage, Jens’ demeanour is as impenatrably calm as it is live. He chats in such gentle and quiet tones that I’d later wonder if my battery died from the sheer strain of trying to pick up his voice. I ask him about how songs which seem to have such complicated arrangements on record translate live? “Some songs I have to change the arrangements a lot on,” he says, “and some I can’t even play live.” I tell him I heard one of the songs he rarely plays is ‘Maple Leaves, (a swooning ballad from an early EP built around a violin sample) which is a shame because it is such a beautiful song. He smiles, and says it will probably get a rare airing later on. Sure enough, about halfway through the gig, Jens announces a guest musician will be joining him, and a beaming Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) walks into the fray. Together, he and Jens play a wonderfully stirring version of maple leaves. It’s a showstopping turn but more is to come. In a spontaeneous and electric moment, the man who earlier proclaimed “I wish I could have brought [a full band] with me,” leaves me secretly glad that this particular wish did not come true. During ‘Black Cab’ he turns the mic to the crowd and they softly sing the song’s melancholy chorus back to him. He loops it and plays it back to us over the venue’s speakers. The effect is hair-raising and touching. He really didn’t need that band at all.

Young Galaxy

Young Galaxy only work as a couple. Made up of partners Stephen Ramsay and Catherine McCandless (along with 4 other members), the band’s main energy- and content- emerges from Ramsay and McCandless’s relationship. Ramsay is excitable and unguarded, while McCandless is wary and reserved. Many times during the interview, she motions to Ramsay that, perhaps, he should think before he speaks. A touring member of Stars, Ramsay ‘walked into a scenario in Stars where two of the members were breaking up and one of them was getting together with another member.’ McCandless quickly interjects with-‘Is that out right now in the press? I don’t know!’- and Ramsay apologetically draws back, saying ‘Oh fuck yeah, only certain people know.’

The interplay between their two personalities becomes even more apparent when Ramsay muses that ‘I think we’ve staked our, well, everything, in a way, on our relationship, and that’s the sort of approach we took with this project. I think everything, at the heart of it, comes from that place. If in a year from now we find ourselves broken up, I don’t think the band will continue. We’ve staked our relationship on the band.’ McCandless assures that ‘we won’t break up though. We won’t.’ This affirmation spurs Ramsay on further, and bringing the WAV recorder closer, he enthusiastically adds ‘We know that. You wanna know why we know? I’ll tell you why we know, here’s an exclusive. Katherine was married to, essentially, our best friend. I was the best friend of her and her husband. We had an affair. At the same time as this, Katherine was diagnosed with M.S. We were in our twenties, and we were living like rock stars already, we weren’t in a band or anything. We had the world at our feet, we felt like everything was possible. We had this really idealistic way of looking at the world and it felt like all our best efforts were being challenged by the universe essentially. Our lives were fucked.’ At this point, McCandless flashes her eyes towards Ramsay, looking worried, saying -‘My look is that you’re going to tell the whole story.’ Ramsay promises that he won’t, McCandless looks unconvinced and attempts to logically sum up Ramsay’s point- ‘We were so destroyed by the devastating after-effects of what we’d done, and yet, so in love that we feel we’ve built something that’s super-strong. As strong as our destruction was.’

Though the circumstances for Young Galaxy’s conception were unfavourable, they have been fortunate in coming from a large musical community (members of Stars and the Besnard Lakes played on their debut record) and in being signed to Arts and Crafts. McCandless agrees that ‘absolutely it’s helpful to be part of a scene I think, you see other example of people leading the life that you want to lead. It’s not a simple thing to just drop your day job and decide to make music, at a huge personal cost. It feels like a risk. When you have other people in your community doing the same thing, and going to each other’s shows, and playing on each other’s albums, there’s so much support and it makes it that much easier. I don’t think it limits us in any way; it doesn’t make us feel like we can’t do our own thing.’ Ramsay concurs that ‘the only thing we may feel pressure to do is to define ourselves on where we sit on our own label, because the label has a tendency to be viewed, um, that every band on Arts and Crafts is part of a collective. We have had, by and large, very little input from bands on Arts and Crafts. But then you know, I played in Stars, and we’re on Arts and Crafts, and we’re called Young Galaxy and people like to mash all the associations together and make a nice tidy package and that’s fine. We feel like we’re working in a very liberated scene, if you want to use that word’. They cite the Arcade Fire as an inspiration, though for differing reasons. Ramsay admires them because ‘they’ve decided, very pointedly, to not play the game of playing into their fame or any of that, for anything other than the best reasons. That sets a really nice tone, because everyone admires their fame and aspires to that. But beyond that, they also have a very reputable approach. It has integrity, and that’s hard to do when you’re that huge.’ McCandless however, applauds their business savvy -‘it’s not the size, it’s the way they’ve built a business. It’s sustainable. They can do what they do forever now.’

The forthcoming self-title album is standard Arts and Crafts fare, and while Young Galaxy shrink from comparisons with Stars, the similarities are self-evident: Boy/Girl vocals, keyboards, melancholic lyrics and soaring melodies abound. Though the record was recorded as, essentially, a duo, when it came to performing it live difficulties presented themselves. Ramsay and McCandless added in four other members, and Ramsay, tired of having to play someone else’s music whilst touring with Stars, was adamant that the new members would be allowed creative input also: ‘My experience is- having been a touring member of Stars- it’s hard to be told to play parts and not just make it your own. To faithfully play someone else’s idea, it’s hard to do. I sort of figured we had to give some leeway to people, and sure enough, that meant that our set-up would change. There’s so many layers on the record that we could never pull off live. We had to strip it back, deconstruct it and put it back together and equally share it with the six people involved.’ While this egalitarian attitude is admirable, it in turn factored in more problems. McCandless adjoins- ‘that kind of screwed us for a while, for me. That was the first thing we realised, we had to learn to sing loudly. I was so used to trying to sing under my breath so that people wouldn’t hear me. Suddenly I have to sing over two guitars, bass, keyboards and drums.’ The incline of their learning curve is not to be underestimated. Previous to making the record, Young Galaxy had no record deal and had played no live shows- ‘We had no live experience; we’d never been in a band. I’d been in Stars, but only as a touring member. We’d sung this record in a studio but had no experience playing these songs live. Despite the fact that it worked in the studio, you can’t, for instance have this big racket going on and be whispering your vocals the whole time. It sounds brutal; it sounds like ducks being strangled.’

On the album’s opening and stand-out track- what Ramsay later calls ‘our creed’- ‘Swing Your Heartache’, the lyrics are achingly bare. They don’t speak in terms of Stars’s ‘Endless Beauty’ but of more grown-up concepts- ‘It’s time for you and I to face the signs/ and realize that living’s a battle’. Ramsay’s world-weary vocals combine with McCandless’s searing harmonies to create a battle cry for the bruised, the underdog and the dreamers- ‘For all the times we cried/ absorbed the lies/ and realized/ life’s not a rehearsal’. The gung-ho attitude of the lyrics is re-enforced by the personal investment that Young Galaxy have made in the band. Ramsay and McCandless are unflinchingly honest about the financial risk involved with the project – ‘We could make about 50,000 dollars if we sold our music to an ad right now, and we are probably equally as much in debt, in terms of getting the band launched.’ McCandless’s practical side manifests itself once more when she ads bluntly that ‘we’re by nature selling ourselves, cause we’re performers, that’s what we do.’ However, with a sidelong glance and a sigh towards Ramsay she inserts an ellipses and continues, ‘but we’re willing to have long-term sustainability be the goal, instead of short-term, so we can make choices that feel like they have integrity to us.’

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