YOUNG MOTHER with MAUSOLEUM, OSTRICH TUNING and TETRAGON at Get Well (1181 Dundas West), Friday (July 13). $6 at the door. See listing.
In an email to NOW in May, Young Mother frontman Jesse James Laderoute wrote that the band had been around in various forms for two years but that they’d only been a “good band” for six of those months.
Nearing the release show for their debut album, Future Classics (Telephone Explosion), we reconnected over Scotch at the Caledonian, where Laderoute elaborated on that simultaneously self-deprecating/boastful statement.
“When I started putting the band together, I didn’t really know what I wanted it to be. Did I want to sound like a weird punk band? A band influenced by Krautrock? Did I want it to be arty or noisy or psychedelic? I didn’t really know, so I’d just throw things at the wall and see what stuck.”
Early Young Mother shows were often loose and messy. The lineup changed from gig to gig and used Laderoute’s song sketches as a guideline, improvising freely with horns, feedback or TV static (depending on the night).
Eventually, the members coalesced into a permanent four-piece, and when the time came to enter the studio they had a well-defined aesthetic: tightly wound bass and drum rhythms surrounded by spacy organ grooves, nimble guitar leads, squelching saxophone and punk-influenced vocals.
They’ll be one of the first performers to take the stage at new Dundas West bar Get Well, owned and managed by Young Mother bassist Alan Kelly.
“If I have a philosophical approach to my music at all, it’s that I don’t want it to be instantly gratifying in the way a blog hype band usually is – rising quickly and flaming out just as quickly,” says Laderoute, lowering his gaze to his Scotch glass.
“Take the culture of whisky. Few things are made that way any more, with so much attention to detail and quality that it takes 12 or 15 years just so I can have this beverage in my hand.
“I want to make a record that stands up to repeated listenings and avoids the laziness, empty hype and other pitfalls that our current culture of immediacy has encouraged. In a lot of ways, Young Mother are a pre-internet kind of band.”
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