Rapture ready

>> Montreal’s Young Galaxy aren’t
afraid of the end of the world

ASTRONOMICAL: Young Galaxy

By LORRAINE CARPENTER

“Four sides of vinyl, it’s called Sex Hospital, it’s an epic journey into one man’s broken psyche.” Stephen Ramsay is joking about Young Galaxy’s impending concept album, but in all seriousness, “the end of the world” is nigh on the sextet’s next record. They’ve been previewing three new songs live since their Pop Montreal performance in the fall, songs currently being recorded at Hotel2Tango with Radwan Moumneh.

For now, Young Galaxy continue to promote their eponymous debut, an album of near-Spiritualized proportions released last year by Arts & Crafts. They recently returned from a brief tour of Europe and the U.K., where they joined Hot Hot Heat and MSTRKRFT at an all-Canadian festival in Utrecht, Holland. They also played Manchester, where they hoped to lay a rose in front of the old Factory Records office and see one-time Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr in their audience—neither mission was successful.

“Apparently that’s where Johnny Marr likes to drink,” says Ramsay, “at the Night and Day in Manchester, but apparently he doesn’t drink anymore. Too many conflicting stories there. But no, of course he didn’t show up, Jesus, nobody showed up—Barney didn’t show up, Mark E. Smith didn’t even walk by, the toothless bastard.”

The grizzled Fall singer was spotted on his previous trip to Manchester, when Ramsay was a touring guitarist with Stars. He was recruited by the Montreal band in 2004, after he and his musical collaborator/girlfriend Catherine McCandless decided to relocate from Vancouver to Montreal to pursue masters degrees. Stars singer Torquil Campbell, who’d met Ramsay through his actress wife Moya O’Connell, was impressed by the couple’s Young Galaxy demos and essentially offered Ramsay a preview of what life was like on the road.

“When I started, I figured people were gonna think I was a total impostor,” Ramsay says. “Here I am playing in a band for the first time with no experience and these guys have been at it four, five years. I was sure that, eventually, someone was gonna pick me out and be like, ‘Show’s over, buddy, the jig is up. Get off the stage.’ But after two years, I felt like I could probably do this, and I could probably do it my own way.”

No feelings

As is evident from such wide-angle tunes as “Swing Your Heartache” and “Lazy Religion,” Young Galaxy’s musical and lyrical M.O. involves earnest expression and emotional resonance. In a recent blog on the band’s Web site and MySpace page, Ramsay ranted rather effectively about the dearth of “emotional risks” in indie rock today.

“I was just trying to vent some frustration,” he says, admitting that he’d recently read all the critics’ year-end best-ofs, most of which didn’t list Young Galaxy. “First and foremost, I’m a music fan, and I don’t know what’s happened in the last few years, but every single band that’s been held at the highest esteem is super obtuse—really clever bands that don’t make any attempt to connect emotionally with their audience.

“I defy anyone to be talking about Animal Collective’s Fireworks in a year. Sure, they have some great ideas, but they get unfettered critical acclaim while bands like mine, or bands like Stars, seem to have a harder time because we make earnest emotional statements.”

Ramsay exempts Arcade Fire from his attack, and expresses some respect for music that can be enjoyed on strictly intellectual or physical levels, but filling emotional voids with irony and gimmicks and other devices that “kick sand over the tracks so people can’t follow you” clearly says nothing to him about his life.

“I’m a self-taught musician who just loves music and wants to contribute in the way that music has given to me. I’d be fooling myself if I thought I could re-invent the wheel musically, so all I have at my disposal is my own perspective, my way of translating the world around me, and that’s done emotionally. That’s your greatest resource and the defining characteristic of your personality, as opposed to having wicked chops on an 808 drum machine. There are so many ways of making clever music now, but to make something that resonates emotionally is not so easy.

“I don’t know why [these bands] are afraid of reaching people and having a genuine moment with them,” he adds. “Torq and I were talking about this over the holidays. Classic Campbell line: ‘Are they afraid of dying? Are they afraid of the end of the world?’”

With Peter Björn and John at Club Soda
on Monday, Jan. 21, 8 p.m., $25, all ages