Young Galaxy

Mates of State, those most visible of married bandmates, make this statement on their website:
Q. What is it like being married and playing music together?
A. Probably, exactly how you imagine it would be.
Which is to say, it's what you make of it, which is to say, maybe it's not always that great. Being a couple in a band is kind of like making a double commitment -- if the band tanks, what happens to the relationship, and God forbid, vice versa?


The couple at the heart of Young Galaxy seem to have a lot invested in each other -- this is a strength and a weakness. Like a lot of bands on the Arts and Crafts label (Stars, the Dears, Broken Social Scene), they exude a kind of post-religious reverence for love (mostly romantic), and they express it with religious vocabulary: Young Galaxy is teeming with holy language: "grace," "wailing wall," "lazy religion," "oh Lord," "God knows." They even use that invocation popularized by Death Cab for Cutie: "Come on..." OK, but is (this) (or any) (romantic) love really just a "lazy religion?" And is our faith in the power of keyboards, drums, and guitars a poor substitute for that proverbial Something More?

Yes and no. Rilke wrote that we "love God into being," which isn't exactly how I'd put it, but then again we are here and there is some kind of big love out there, maybe we feel it expanding outward, like a big bang, from partnerships like the one in Young Galaxy, maybe we feel it a million other places, but we are looking for it and we do have these guitars and drums and keyboards and we have figured out how to make a joyful noise, even if some aren't making it unto anyone in particular, and there are a lot of people doing their part to make some kind of Kingdom come.

P.S. Also, I think this is a real good record, music-wise.
P.S. In their press kit, Stephen Ramsay describes YG's music as ""Like a Giant Ice Cream Sundae...That You Live in A Castle on Top Of."