Albums : Young Galaxy : Ultramarine

Albums : Young Galaxy : Ultramarine

Listen To Young Galaxy : Ultramarine

Who is Young Galaxy?
Ultramarine is the name and colour of Young Galaxy’s fourth LP, the first album they have made away from Montreal, across the sea, all together. Like 2011′s Shapeshifting, Ultramarine was made with electronic producer Dan Lissvik (Studio); but this time it was made in Gothenburg, Sweden, at Lissvik’s studio; this time five musicians stood in a room with Lissvik, playing their instruments; this time every song was sung by co-founder Catherine McCandless, with eyes on a blue horizon.

These are ten tracks of shining, glimmering electronic pop – songs that scatter across the dancefloor, swim through headphones, ringing out like a cold new summer. A modern record, beautifully now, and in a way more direct than anything Young Galaxy have ever made. This band has always loved pop music; here they lean into this love, finding lyrics that speak more to the beat than to intimate autobiography. They summon the spirit of our new century songbook, songs from Sweden to Manchester to down the block: “Fools Gold”, “We Share Our Mother’s Health”, “Protection”, “Machine Gun”, Orbital’s “Belfast”, or Factory Floor’s “Two Different Ways.”

“In being away from home we felt like we could risk more,” McCandless says. “Take bigger chances. Things we didn’t think would work, we tried anyway.” Whereas Shapeshifting was compartmentalized – songs recorded in Montreal, sent to Lissvik to transmute – Ultramarine came to Gothenburg as a live work, the sum of a performing band’s blood and sweat. Once they arrived in Sweden they reinvented the material, together. But the live performances’ visceral energy stayed at the forefront – these songs aren’t mixing-board creations, they are kinetic, inhabited, and full of breath.

Lissvik likes to do a lot of takes. Sharing a single small apartment, Young Galaxy played and played, building a new mission statement. McCandless spent an entire week recording vocals. “I can’t act. I can’t fake it,” she says. And although Ultramarine is more direct than previous records have been, with songs of azure longing, Young Galaxy haven’t lost their other aspect: a willfulness, a purposeful independence, and a sense of darkness, unilluminated. “If a song is too sweet, it’s not right.” As lighthearted as Ultramarine can be – as much as you can dance to it – there is also something elemental, something underneath. As McCandless puts it: “Music is a doorway into an engine room.”

From out of that engine room, dazzling new songs. Ultramarine rings and shoves, clear as rhythm, hidden as heartbreak. A record becomes timeless by being of its time, by singing out its ambition, with hooks & hooks & the promise of something more. Young Galaxy are Catherine McCandless, Stephen Ramsay, Stephen Kamp, Matthew Shapiro and Andrea Silver. They are from Montreal.

Ultramarine Review
On paper, the sentiments that typify Young Galaxy’s fourth album Ultramarineare about as complex and challenging as a breezy, 80 degree day in late April: “I don’t care if the disbelievers don’t understand, you’re my pretty boy always.” “When you a need a guide, I’ll light your way/ The beat is yours so let it play.” “Feels like a dream tonight/ A little break in time as we howl at the moon.” When sung by Catherine McCandless in the context of the Montreal quintet’s fluorescent synths and Balearic rhythms, they become no more complex or challenging. But the arrival of spring isn't a guilty pleasure, nor is it high art; which makes Ultramarine's timing extremely fortuitous, at it's every bit as enjoyable because of its satisfying, innocent immediacy, not in spite of it.

Young Galaxy’s starburst electro-pop can seem awfully naïve: After tapping Studio’s Dan Lissvik to produce their third album, a major transition from the wan, post-Broken Social Scene electrogaze of their debut to slick sophisti-pop, they actually called the results Shapeshifting. At its best, Ultramarine's intentions are just as overtly pop and candid, most powerfully demonstrated by the astonishing “Pretty Boy”, a song which hits its mark with such truth and utter lack of guile, it’s hard to believe it hasn’t been around for decades. From McCandless’ first lyric (“When we were lost/ We found each other/ And headed sightless for the city”), you’re picturing a classic us-vs.-them romantic archetype, something most bands would to be too self-conscious to even consider. Yet while McCandless’ words remain economical throughout, they hint at an underlying reality in the verses that feels devastating (“I felt no pain when you changed your name/ We were each other’s only family”) until it’s overpowered by the reassurance of the chorus (“I know you feel isolated/ And I feel what you won’t say”).

It’s a song powered by emotional dynamism as decimating as any soft-loud chorus explosion, breaking your heart before melting it back into something solid and functioning. The music complies, as its star-crossed narrators are either protected or quarantined from anyone besides each other. Lissvik’s production is clean without being clinical, detailed without clutter-- a pinging New Order arpeggio cycles along while shakers, assorted blips, and harmonies wheel upward, giving the sonic field of “Pretty Boy” a three-dimensional, all-encompassing immersion.

You can’t blame Young Galaxy for leading off with such a monumental song, yet putting it first might feel like a misstep; surely, they’d want to build to this kind of emotional peak. Fortunately, the next two are strong enough to withstand the impact of “Pretty Boy”, and for about 12 minutes, Ultramarine is astounding in its execution. Both “Fall For You” and “New Summer” offer different moods than “Pretty Boy”-- the former is Bo Diddley-beat reframed as irrepressibly sunny Swedish reggae, while the latter slowly aspires to M83’s interstellar overdrive. Like "Pretty Boy", they introduce the stakes in urgent, Springsteen-ian terms (“I work the mines ‘til the break of dawn,” “Meet me by the river, let’s go for a ride with the windows down and the stereo loud”) and use the hooks to offer escapism that feels redemptive even if it isn’t the least bit believable. Hurry up, we’re dreaming, you know?

It’s no slight to say nothing on Ultramarine matches its opening triad-- not much does. The remainder of it is solid, though it shows a band still using established pop framework in lieu of a personality. To that end, it makes sense that Stephen Ramsay would cede full control of lead vocals to McCandless, solidifying their identity and giving Young Galaxy a true frontperson on their breakthrough album. But while McCandless is a capable vocalist, she’s not a commanding one and it leaves Young Galaxy unable to truly deliver the goods on dancefloor diva-oriented material. McCandless is confident enough to smolder on “In Fire” and “Fever”, though attitude or grit would set them ablaze. When she tries to infuse boldness through her lyrics, it only stresses her brittle tone-- “I don’t need authenticity/ To make me more like me” sounds like a self-help recitation rather than a firm belief during the generic glam shuffle “What We Want”, while “Hard To Tell” spends its entire four minutes recovering from McCandless declaring “for you, I am a gangster,” one of the points where you wish Young Galaxy had some kind of ironic capacity.

But those are ultimately quibbles that prevent Ultramarine from being a truly great record rather than one of 2013’s stronger pop albums. The back half still hits squarely, if not as hard as the beginning: the gooey gumdrop “Sleepwalk With Me” is a strong closing argument for "synth-pop sweethearts" as Young Galaxy’s best incarnation, and while the kids at Coachella weren’t feeling the Stone Roses, “Out the Gate Backwards” utilizes the powerfully nostalgic sound of bar room piano loops, glassy guitar delay, and plasticine bongos to prove Madchester can still twist melons. That a burgeoning remix community has sprung up around “Pretty Boy” and “New Summer” without drastically changing the underlying material can just serve as further proof that Ultramarine is strong enough to withstand whatever way you choose to enjoy it, whether it’s shuffling the top-heavy sequencing or just playing “Pretty Boy” on repeat to your heart’s content. It’s generous like that.


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