My Recommendation: Young the Giant

Today’s recommendation comes from Irvine, CA by the band Young the Giant formerly known as The Jakes. The band started coming around in 2004, went through some personnel change and towards the end of 2009 decided to change their name and settled on the following lineup Sameer Gadhia (Vocals), Jacob Tilley (Guitars), Eric Cannata (Guitars), Payam Doostzadeh (Bass) and Francois Comtois (Drums).

The band is literally a melting pot of cultures and traditions with one first generation Indian-American, one first generation Persian-American, a French Canadian and two Brits. They bring together all their influences and infuse it with the Pop Rock sound which gives it an exotic taste. Sameer’s all four grandparents were classical singers in India and you can hear a lot of that in his vocals also if you have ever had the chance to listen to Bollywood music you can hear some of that too in his songs, here’s what he said about their music

“We draw on different experiences and influences and it really comes down to our backgrounds , what we listened to, the lyrics that affected us, the stories that affected us.”

I was intrigued by the name of the band and was looking forward to a bit of a story but just like yesterday it turned out to be a dud, here’s what Francois said about that

“Young the Giant came with a good two months of us banging our head against the wall. Anytime we had a name we thought we liked we’d have a huge downpour of negative criticism from everyone, friends and management, the label didn’t like it. It got to this point that we were so frustrated, eventually I think Sameer, it kind of popped out of his mouth, “Young the Giant.” And then, “Yeah, I like that. Let’s tell everyone else to go f*** off and do it.” Basically that’s kinda what it was and what we ended up liking was that it was something spontaneous that we could all get behind. As far as any real meaning or context apart from that, there’s really not all that much.”

The song I’m recommending, My Body comes from their self-titled debut album, its their most successful song to date, starts off with a deep base line but quickly converts into this melodic number with a subtle riff that reminds me of Tears For Fears and then bursts into this anthemic chorus which is quite a treat, the song talks about the struggle within between liberation and one’s inner instincts to stick to the known, here’s what Eric Cannata said about the song

“The dynamic between tension and liberation came from the very basic literal interpretation of the struggle we experienced directly before the creation of the song. It was a stroke of inspiration, and later appreciated insight, that cut through a relatively frustrating time for us as writers. As mutual writers, it can be both smooth and rough to create songs together, and it all depends on the daily dynamic.

The specific day of My Body‘s creation was one of those rougher days for us. We had opened sail on a relatively stale wind, and had caught on to a mellower vein of overly contemplated writing. In a bout of frustration, we just decided to try something absolutely different; something based on instinct and spontaneity rather than meditation and patience. The song started just as a quirky joke; a release of tension. The riff, melody, and lyrics formed in a matter of ten minutes. At the end of the album writing process, My Body stayed the most pure to its raw, original, form.”

Like I said this song has been a very successful venture for them, it has peaked on the US Alternative Songs charts at number 5, has been featured in a handful of TV shows and commercials and caught my ears when I heard it in the TV ad for the Dolly Parton & Queen Latifah starring movie Joyful Noise. There are so many live performances available of this song, I’ll throw in three of them here along with the song, don’t forget to checkout the Facebook page for some more live performances and a recent interview of them, here’s the song