YOUNG EMPIRES at The Drake Underground (1150 Queen West), Thursday (June 9), 9 pm. $12. RT, SS, PTR. See listing.
For local haute-rockers Young Empires, Thursday’s show is a sort of homecoming.
The last year has seen the dapper trio tirelessly hopscotch the globe playing uber-cool afterparties and large outdoor festivals, while steadily building some serious virtual buzz.
Their well-crafted blend of catchy world-beat rhythms and soaring post-punk melodies has landed them on big-time tours with Chromeo, Bag Raiders, and Foster the People, and will see them back on the road this summer alongside The Naked and Famous, and Vampire Weekend.
“This most recent European tour was a big spark for us, we were lucky to be playing to sold out crowds every night,” says vocalist Matthew Vlahovich. “People over there love our music, so we’re going to try to tour there two or three times a year in the future.”
That said, this most recent jaunt wasn’t without dramatic moments: at a show in Amsterdam in May, a careless audience member accidentally toppled the band’s laptop, cracking its screen. In rough shape, the computer at least continued to function, so the band crossed their fingers and soldiered on.
“It was definitively stressful. We had to play some really big shows not knowing if the hard drive would just fail and stop everything.”
Even with technical difficulties, the band was continuously buoyed by old-fashioned crowd metrics-which they trust more than blog buzz or Like button clicks.
“Sometimes we’d play a few shows in the same city, and we’d notice the same people in the crowd again and again. By the end we’d see a bunch of them singing along. That was great.”
But for the guys in YE, fine dining and good drinks are just as important as inciting sweaty, all-out dance parties.
“In Stockholm, we arrived a day early, and the promoters took us out for a traditional Swedish dinner: pickled herring, pork shoulder, root vegetable mash. On our day off in Brussels-where I used to live-I took the other guys out to my old favourite spots for good Belgian beer and absinthe. Sometimes our days off were even more fun than playing shows.”
With more jet-setting in their future, the band also plans to focus on finally officially releasing some material. An EP for later this summer, and a full-length for the fall are both in the works, and will feature updates of their blog hits, alongside new songs they’ve been testing out at shows.
