Quick Before it Melts

Friday 04 September 2009

Light years

The birth of any galaxy is probably a pretty perilous prospective.  Granted, I’ve never lived through the process myself, but it’s not hard to imagine the combustion and cosmic confusion that gives way in the moments after inception.  I’d liken it to the tumultuous and chaotic afterbirth Montreal’s Young Galaxy went through after forming in 2005.  Quickly signed to Arts & Crafts, the home to Stars (Young Galaxy singer/guitarist Stephen Ramsay was a touring member at the time), a connection was formed with their similarly astral-named label mates in the minds of press and public alike.  While they may have shared a member, there wasn’t much that Young Galaxy and Stars had in common, and it seemed that this new band were being forced into an orbit that wasn’t really aligned to who they were spiritually and musically.

In spite of this, they managed to release an impressive debut album.  Young Galaxy (released in 2007) sounded like it was coming from the dark side of the Moon, cresting  on the horizon and coming into the bright burning light of the sun.  It’s sometimes languid pace and dreamy slow jams weren’t always cosmic alchemy, but producer Jace Lasek (he of The Besnard lakes) and Ramsay managed to craft a vibrant and sometimes fantastic mix of shoegaze, dream pop, and electronic music (as exemplified in the glorious “The Sun’s Coming Up And My Plane’s Going Down” and “Come And See”).

The planets are lining up for Young Galaxy with the release of their sophomore album, Invisible Republic.  Now free from the gravitational pull of Arts & Crafts, Ramsay and fellow Galaxian Catherine McCandless connected with Stephen Kamp and multi-instrumentalist Max Henry–who are now full-fledged members of the band–and began collaborating on music that revealed more of who they were as artists.  The result: part funky joint (“Disposable Times”), part whip-smart  disco (“Long Live The Fallen World”), and part epic perfection (“Destroyer”), that positions Young Galaxy in that envious spot of having successfully made it through the meteor storm-like pounding many second albums take, and poised to go supernova with album number three.  In the interim, Invisible Republic is a more than capable soundtrack for any journey you may be planning on taking, cosmic or otherwise.

MP3: Young Galaxy “Destroyer”
Myspace: Young Galaxy
Facebook: Young Galaxy

by J. Di Gioia | 2 Comments »

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under MP3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.