Young Galaxy's Invisible Republic Is A Darker Place

09/15/09 4:54pm

by Sarah Kurchak (CHARTattack)

Two years after the release of their self-titled debut album, Young Galaxy are back with a new label, a full band, a dancier, more robust sound and a new perspective.

CHARTattack talked to co-founder, singer and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Ramsay about the challenges and changes that the band — and the world — have faced during the period that gave birth to Invisible Republic.

CHARTattack: Young Galaxy are a pretty classic case of having your whole life to write your first album and a couple of years to write your second one. Did you feel rushed or pressured at all making Invisible Republic?
Stephen Ramsay: No, not at all. If anything, we feel like it took longer than we wanted to make.

We started making this one, actually, in January of 2008 and so here we are, August 2009 and to me, that's a long time — nowadays especially — to be making a record. Maybe some people like to work that way, but to me the creative process is kind of an ongoing thing.

A record represents a snapshot of the creative process, not so much like it has to be this perfectly formed thing, I realized. We put so much into the first record and it took so many years of dreaming and making the record and then it came out and we realized that, by the time it was out, we'd already moved on from some of the ideas.

So we realized the whole process is about moving through it. You don't ever arrive anywhere, you're just sort of moving through it. I wouldn't use the word "journey," because I hate that phrase, I think it's overused, but it is about the creative process as it's sort of changing and I think that's really compelling. In fact, we're writing for the third record as we speak. We're just the kind of people who like to move through our ideas, so we never felt any pressure.

There has been a very definite evolution in sound on this album. Was that a conscious decision or did it just naturally evolve?
It was partly conscious, for sure. I think we struggled with interpreting the first record live. We're not really shy, retiring types and a lot of the press and a lot of the things we were getting back were like, "Wow, you guys are so much more extroverted as a live band than you are on record."

The record was very hushed and muted and quite and gentle in a way. And that was never really our intention, ever. Certainly, it's an element to it, but we also really wanted to show passion first and foremost.

So we realized that we had to make some changes stylistically to achieve that effect. We used less of the reverby, delay stuff and we went for more aggressive, rhythm-oriented songwriting. And we were listening to a lot of music that had more of that, I guess, for lack of a better word, "urgency" about it, like had a kind of tension and excitement about it musically.

It sounds like the headspace of the band has evolved, too.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. The music industry has changed so much, and as people, we've changed.

We came to it naive and hopeful and very optimistic and excited and having made big changes in our lives personally. The whole first record was about perspective and how you can look at the world in a particular way and as difficult and hard as it can be, to be optimistic, ultimately. But we felt like we couldn't just keep doing this album.

I think we were having a tough time feeling like we were getting established as a band. Obviously, we left Arts & Crafts at that point and so there was sort of a lot of turmoil around what the future of the band would be. And so I think we were in a darker headspace when we started.

We started making it in the dead of winter, at a time when things were kind of tense between us and the label, and also some of the band members were leaving and new ones were joining, so it was a big mishmash. And everyone was feeling pretty dark at that point. George Bush was still in power, and the economy was crashing. We were like, "The world is a dark place, let's not just sit here being naive about it."

And so a lot of the songs, like "Long Live The Fallen World" — it's a dark song, it's about the environment and the human world as we know it just sort of maxing itself out in a way and how tragic that is, given what an incredible opportunity it is to be alive, to make something incredible and magical and self-reflexive. We're the only entity in the universe, as far as we know, that has this ability and here we are just fucking it up. So let's write about this a little more.

There's definitely a different scope to it.
Yeah, it's more varied. Plus, there's more people involved in the actual process of making the music now. More people are contributing creatively.

The first record was very much about Catherine (McCandless, singer and keyboardist) and I just working something out together with the help of our friends. Once we had a band together, it was sort of like, "Who wants to be in a band where you're just standing there, waiting for your cue from someone else?"

Everyone should be contributing and have a stake in it and feel like they're creatively contributing, because I certainly don't find it interesting to listen to just stuff that I do. I know what I do. I want to see what other people bring to it and see how that changes the overall effect of the music.