After playing festival slots at Sasquatch and Lollapalooza this summer, California band Young the Giant have been keeping busy and seeing exponentially positive results. Since their eponymous performance at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Young the Giant gained significant media attention.
Now, they’re finishing a string of supporting shows with alt-rockers Incubus, before headlining their own batch of shows, including a stop in Calgary.
Guitarist Jacob Tilley, speaks with the Weal.
Weal: As a result of your 2011 MTV Video Music Awards performance, the band saw a spike in its iTunes sales of over 200 per cent for the single, ‘My Body.’ What is your take on iTunes and the digital world of downloading?
JT: I don’t use iTunes personally, and I think it is the best outlet for music for the mass public nowadays. CDs have become so obsolete and pretty much lifeless at this point because it’s physically too much space and people have iPods and just want single songs. I think as a whole it’s great because at least people are still buying music to some extent. But personally, I usually just download records, and then if I’m really enjoying the record, I will buy it on vinyl and that’s the way I go about it. I can’t afford to spend as much money as I do consuming. It (iTunes) is great, and I’m happy that we’re able to sell our stuff on there cause it helps us out a lot, and we’re still an upcoming band. It’s really allowed us to put our foot in the door. It’s a good and bad thing I guess, and I can say thank you to iTunes for helping us out because it’s been our biggest (source) of actual people buying our music.
Weal: You played festival slots this summer, and are now playing a string of supporting and headlining shows. What are the differences between shows?
JT: It’s just a different platform really. We’ve been on supporting headlines before, but this is sort of the next level for us. It’s very different because I feel obviously a little bit isolated from our audience, because we’re pretty much just used to playing a small dive bar. On the other hand it’s allowing all of us to band together as a group. I really, really like that element, and I feel like it more as a job than I used to.
I’m looking forward to this headlining tour that we’re going to be doing in the fall and spring of next year. It’s part of the reason why we’re going to be taking a little time off in November, December, and January to kind of write and also reshape ourselves. I think now, the goal is to get it to where we can control the shows ourselves. We’re playing in whole new cities, and I cannot wait for that, because that’s definitely the place I feel most comfortable. I feel more connected to what’s actually going on, while on these big tours, it’s very separated.
Weal: What can fans expect from you?
JT: I think if you haven’t seen us live, you should come out and just see the show, because I think our record is very different from our live set. We’re just very happy to be given a chance to play at this level and kind of make ways in this scene and hopefully inspire other kids to pick up instruments and play too.
Young the Giant play Mac-
Ewan Ballroom on Oct. 14. Win tickets to the show by filling out the Weal reader survey at theweal.com.
- files from Alex Glazerman