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.’

Ailbhe Malone is 21 years old. Her father told her the other day that she was 'going to change the world'. She remains sceptical.
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