Andrew DuncanYoung Galaxy
Down Time
Independent
★★★★
The big news in the Young Galaxy camp is that Down Time is their first fully independent album. The more important news is that this is called by the band a reinvention. Stemming from a punk spirit, they have incorporated a sense of cultural fierceness into this album that pushes forth and fully embraces our current social methodology wrapped around the dreaminess in electro-pop culture.
Don’t expect Down Time to be full of futuristic folly, there are voids and weirdness that pull the listener down a rabbit hole of deep meditative thought. Somewhere between Rabbit in the Moon and Mongolian Jetset lies “The River.” An after-hours diversion that sits just outside the rave, blurring reality and contemplation. The song is fascinating in the fact that it culminates little bits of futurism and urban culture all into one. This song defines 21st Century ethos more than Saint Etienne defined pop music in the ‘90s.
Young Galaxy – Frontier Official Video
Yet “The River” is a fleeting moment like every song on this album. “Frontier” makes it evident it is prospecting technology and adding human emotion to create a natural environment into this shadow-covered timescape. What these songs find in common, vocalist Catherine McCandless claims is love, art, subversion, risk and vulnerability.
Their standout single, “Under My Wing,” is an intelligent piece that shines a little brighter in electronic hues and layering. The song puts us outside of the circle. It’s what the Reagan years left us and this song is us standing in the midst of a current social and political crossroads.
Down Time shows Young Galaxy is taking their own risks with great reward. McCandless puts on her best Sade and entices us with the sensual closure “Elusive Dream.” She sings, “Every view, every sense, every word we try to defend, puts us further out in the deep end.” It twists non-reality from our reality and if you walk away with an uncertain feeling inside then they have accomplished perspective. While we look into our future, Young Galaxy is beginning to define theirs.