Young Galaxy

For their third LP, Young Galaxy gave themselves away. “Shapeshifting”’s 11 new songs, lithe and mesmerizing, were completed at home and then sent away, across the ocean, to one of the world’s most acclaimed and secretive producers. For nine months, Dan Lissvik, half of the Swedish duo Studio, curved and refashioned these tracks; he made and remade them. In October, Lissvik sat down at his computer in Gothenburg. Young Galaxy sat down at their computer in Montreal. And across 3,500 miles, Skype-ing with a friend they have never met, Young Galaxy heard their third album for the first time. The finished album is glittering, seductive and utterly unlike anything Young Galaxy have done before. After the Polaris-nominated “Invisible Republic”, Young Galaxy were dreaming of transformation, transmutation, change. They imagined the parallel universe version of their own band, a Young Galaxy that was never ‘epic’, rarely ‘rock’ instead sexy, spacious, haunted by ghosts in silver, black and primary colours. Whereas they once wrote songs of pounding drums and cresting guitar, this time the four-piece sketched their love of New Order, the Knife and the Eurythmics.