Young Galaxy Promise Changes, Going 'Electronic' With Side Project

Montreal's Young Galaxy don't stick to one particular sound. Instead, they're constantly changing from album to album. On their upcoming follow-up to 2011's Shapeshifting, they're going to switch things up again. Guitarist and co-founder of the band, Steve Ramsay warns us that this might be one of his last interviews... and for a good reason.

"[Co-founder and vocalist Catherine McCandless] is singing all the songs on the next record," Ramsay tells to Spinner. "It just seems natural – she's the voice. That way, it frees me up a bit to do other stuff; I'm more of the concept guy.

"I think it's confusing for people because I do all the talking and she's doing more and more of the singing. She not a conventional musician in the sense that she doesn't play anything and she's not a real showy front person; the whole process of getting her to was always hard, she never had ambitions to do it."
In the band's early days, McCandless had to be coaxed into taking the lead on vocals, but as Ramsay pointed out, the shift has been gradual and with her singing 90 per cent of the songs onstage now, it only makes sense that she also takes the reins as the speaker of the band in interviews.

Not only is Ramsay, McCandless' partner on and offstage, alright with this, but he explains that this is only the first of many new things fans should expect from the dream pop band.

"The new album still has elements of [last record] Shapeshifting on it," Ramsay says. "But I was playing a new song for our sound person the other day and she said, 'That definitely doesn't sound like anything you've done before,' which is good but it scares you.

"It's a pretty pop record. It's direct and poppier than anything we've done. I think we've made our best record yet, it's definitely the most focused record we've ever made. I know every band says that, but I can't deny it. It was a very rewarding experience for everyone involved and when you think about your favorite records, they have this intangible thing that makes it great and I think this has the potential for that."

The band flew to Sweden to work with their friend and producer Dan Lissvik, who they had worked with on their previous record but had yet to actually meet in person. Having spent years communicating via Skype conversations, it was nice for the band and Lissvik to finally spend time in the flesh and work in an actual room together.

"He wasn't just the disembodied voice anymore," Ramsay explains. "We were in a room together for 12 hours a day, it was weird that he was there but it wasn't weird because we've talked so much for two years now, so he's just that guy that we know and new levels of intimacy were reached."

Ramsay hopes that with the new album, Young Galaxy will finally be able to crawl out of the unfortunate label of being "underrated" all these years, something Ramsay, quite frankly, doesn't believe in.

"One of the things that we keep hearing about is that we're underrated, which, really, no band should be underrated," Ramsay says. "Especially in this environment, it suggests that you're doing something wrong or you're confusing people."

The yet-to-be-titled album will hopefully be released early next year but Ramsay also hopes to finally take some time away from his band and start some new projects.

"This is the year of my branching out. I think I'm going to do a couple of other things with other people," Ramsay teases. "I feel like this is my pop life but the other stuff will be darker and more electronic-based because that's inevitable, everyone goes electronic."