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Youth Group.
"We're not world famous," declares Youth Group singer Toby Martin, "But it's good, it's more than I thought would ever happen. The thought that we would release a record overseas is my wildest dream. We've had a few gigs over there, that we've headlined, and we've had 120, 150 people to them. Pretty exciting. We got to a town like Toronto, which I'd never been to before, and I had no idea that anyone had even heard us there, and we got a crowd like that there who all knew the songs. So it's quite a buzz."
Seeing as Youth Group have been rather quiet of late, it seems quite unusual that they would be making such big things happen overseas. After all, the release of last year's fantastic album 'Skeleton Jar' barely made any impression on the Australian scene. Fortunately, with all this new success, Ivy League have thought to re-release that record and to send Youth Group on a big national tour, before they leave our neighbourhood to travel to new and distant lands.
"I think that 'Skeleton Jar' in general, as an album, was where we found who we were, what our sound was," explains Martin of this newly re-released opus. "Before that - we formed in 1998 - we released a lot of singles, and one record, and we were pretty kind of fragmented, or diverse, in our early period. We dabbled a lot - some songs sounded like country, and then we released an EP which was three songs and twenty minutes of feedback. We were very alive to the possibilities of pop music, at the expense of commercial success, maybe! But I think from this record, it is kind of more focussed. Which wasn't exactly deliberate, we weren't trying to be more commercial, but we just, being in a band for a while, we worked out what we were better at, what we were more interested in doing. That's what 'Skeleton Jar' represented to us, working that out.
"We certainly didn't go gold in Australia, but we got to America because our record came out over there. Last year we signed to a label over there called Epitaph..."
Epitaph? Did he say Epitaph?
"It certainly wasn't any great plan, we weren't looking to get signed, we didn't do any big sendouts or anything. They just heard our record and really liked us. We just managed to find the right people."
But how on earth are Epitaph the right people? I mean, Youth
Group aren't exactly So-Cal punk rockers, hey?
"A lot of people do see Epitaph as a punk label, and they certainly started out life as a punk label, they started out as a vehicle to release a Bad Religion album and then they signed Offspring and stuff, which is what they're known for. But more recently they've been a lot more diverse, they signed Tom Waits in the late 'nineties, and they set up a sub-label called 'Anti', and Anti has Tom Waits, and Nick Cave over there. So I guess they're not so much a punk label anymore. And we're on Anti and Epitaph."
The future looks quite interesting for Youth Group; in fact, I'd say they will be the envy of many an Australian musician in the coming months. "We're spending the next few weeks getting new songs together, then we're doing an Australian tour in August, and then we're spending a few months overseas. We're playing a festival in New York, then touring with Death Cab For Cutie in the States. They're a great band, and they seem to like us, which is good. I couldn't imagine a better band to play with, and they're pretty big there, I think!"
And finally, after all of this uncensored gallivanting, Youth Group are already planning their next record. "When we talk about it, we talk about it being folky and ramshackle. Maybe a bit Wilco. I think the album we keep as a guide is 'Bringing It All Back Home' by Bob Dylan, which is really live sounding, with a really driving kind of sound. I would love to make a record like that. Having said that, it will probably end up being totally different. But that's what we're talking about, and we talk about it a lot."
Ben Revi
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dB Magazine proudly present Youth Group at the Enigma Bar on Fri 19 Aug with The Red Riders. The newly repackaged 'Skeleton Jar' is out now through Ivy League/Liberation.
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