aaamusic | On 14, Apr 2011

Shapeshifting isn’t proper dance music– let’s call it dance-inflected pop– but it is fantastic and unbound” – Pitchfork

Shapeshifting isn’t proper dance music– let’s call it dance-inflected pop– but it is fantastic and unbound” – Pitchfork

Hotly tipped Canadian trio, Young Galaxy, have toured with Arcade Fire, been nominated for a Polaris Prize (the Canadian Mercury Prize), dominated the music blogosphere – number 1 on Hype Machine – and now release their third album ‘Shapeshifting’ on May 23rd (in the UK) through Smalltown Supersound, the label that brought you Annie and Lindstrom.

Young Galaxy completed ‘Shapeshifting’ at home and then sent it away, across the ocean, to one of the world’s most acclaimed and secretive producers. For nine months, Dan Lissvik, half of the Swedish duo Studio, curved and refashioned these tracks; he made and remade them.

In October 2010, Lissvik sat down at his computer in Gothenburg. Stephen Ramsay and Catherine McCandless (of Young Galaxy) sat down at theirs in Montreal. And across 3,500 miles, Skype-ing with a friend they have never met, Young Galaxy heard their third album for the first time.

‘Shapeshifting’ is the album Lissvik sent back home – without edits or compromise. It is sparser, stranger than anything Young Galaxy have done before; and more intimate than anything by Studio. There’s songs without verses and choruses, ‘The Angels are Surely Weeping’; songs informed by the Eurythmics and Fever Ray, ‘Blown Minded’; and impressionistic, esoteric, almost unrecognizable songs such as ‘We Have Everything’ – recently given away to fans as a free download.

Then there’s ‘Cover Your Tracks’ which oscillates between density and spaciousness, tribal drums and dual vocals recall the Knife’s ‘Heartbeats’. Cover Your Tracks’ was a phenomenal online success, featuring on every influential music blog: Pitchfork, Gorilla Vs Bear, NME etc. Gauzy shoegaze and ambient loops are complemented with eighties driving synth-pop sounds on ‘B.S.E’ and album closer ‘Shapeshifting’ is all the more effective for its restraint.

“We’re not going to do a Bowie – shave our eyebrows and rename ourselves,” Ramsay says. “We didn’t need to change our name. It feels true to us to be changers.” McCandless agrees: “To be the same people, at different coordinates: that feels very natural to me.”

Get ‘Cover Your Tracks’ the first of two free remix EPs here

Tracks: 1. NTH, 2.The Angels Are Surely Weeping (Featuring Hanna), 3. Blown Minded, 4. We Have Everything, 5. For Dear Life, 6. Peripheral Visionaries, 7. High and Goodbye, 8. Phantoms, 9.Cover Your Tracks, 10. B.S.E, 11. Shapeshifting

Shapeshifting is out 23rd May on Smalltown Supersound.

www.myspace.com/younggalaxy
www.younggalaxy.com