About me [BACKSTAGE PASS: Youthmovies]

About me

Youthmovies is:

Andrew Mears: guitar, vocals
Al English: guitar, vocals
Stephen Hammond: bass
Graeme Murray: drums, vocals
Sam Scott: trumpet, keyboards
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Ostensibly progressive rock to the uninitiated onlooker, Oxford-based quintet Youthmovies can be a difficult band for the inexperienced to digest in a single sitting; live, their maverick sparks singe the air, songs composed of myriad movements reined in and refined, forced into an awkwardly pop-shaped hole. But, really: this wasn’t ever meant to be difficult.

Forming in 2002 at university, Youthmovies (née Youthmovie Soundtrack
Strategies) began as a two-person affair, utilising tape decks and delay pedals to flesh-out a fledgling sound. Founders English and Mears - attracted to one another’s abilities by a shared fondness for left-of-centre alternative music; the pair would book shows for the likes of Kid606 and Part Chimp while at university - soon sought assistance, and Hammond’s arrival and the employment of Simon Jones on drums, later to commit full-time to Hope Of The States, formed a temporarily finished article.

Jones? departure in 2003 freed the drummer’s stool up for Murray - a debut EP, ‘Let’s Get Going… You’re Fracturing Me With This Misery’, soon followed - and since then the core four have pursued a very singular creative path, recalling inventors past while always keeping an eye on widening future horizons. Press Youthmovies and they’ll cite King Crimson, Steve Reich and Sonic Youth as cornerstone influences, but their own reach is indicative of their individuality and status in the contemporary indie-rock scene. Sometime tourmates ¡Forward, Russia! can trace their formation back the initial inspiration of witnessing Youthmovies live; 65daysofstatic are regular co-conspirators, remixing Youthmovies’ ‘…Spooks The Horse’ and sharing a number of tours; and Foals were initially formed, and named, by Mears before the vocalist elected to concentrate 100 per cent on Youthmovies.

Youthmovies’ acclaimed ‘Hurrah!’ EP was released in 2004 on much-lauded indie label Fierce Panda; a re-release a year later incorporated a standalone single, ‘Ores’, the video for which was created by directors Type2Error, whose credits also include Bloc Party and Manic Street Preachers. Since then Youthmovies’ time has rarely been their own for rest and recuperation.

Touring commitments have come thick and fast, with the band supporting Biffy Clyro, Death Cab For Cutie, Mission Of Burma and many more.
Festival appearances - including a memorable improvised set with NYC rapper and poet Saul Williams at the 2005 Leeds Festival and bill-topping appearances at All Tomorrow’s Parties and Truck Festival in 2007 - have been welcome distractions. Special one-off events like the live sound-tracking of films at London’s ICA and the Cambridge Film Festival have attracted new audiences to the band’s idiosyncrasies. A special collaborative EP with two-time tourmate Adam Gnade, ‘Honeyslides’, was released via Try Harder, the label co-founded by English, in 2007. (Try Harder has also released material by Jonquil, Tired Irie, Blood Red Shoes and Foals among others). Now, though, Youthmovies are ready to reveal their debut album, ‘Good Nature’.

Produced alongside Ant Theaker, who also manned the desk for ‘Hurrah!’, Youthmovies’ first long-play release proper is the culmination of more than five years’ hard work. With Scott a full-time member of the Youthmovies unit, the progress from the band’s preceding EP couldn’t be clearer: this is fiery ambition committed to digital disc, the sound of five hungry souls realising all their potential in a blinding flourish of compositional extravagance and exemplary musicianship.

But do not let such on-paper hyperbole for time signature hysteria put you, the potential newcomer, off: ‘elitism’ is a word unknown to Youthmovies, and there’s nothing pretentious about the ten songs that comprise ‘Good Nature’. Immediacy is key, and from the outset onwards this album balances the affecting and accessible with the beguiling and bombastic. It is an album to awaken a mainstream to the talents of five young musicians already enjoying an incredible groundswell of support at a comparative underground level. It is an album to put to bed expectations of impenetrable fret-work and preconceptions of ‘progressive’ being a dirty word.

‘Let’s Get Going…’ were their own words five years ago; with ‘Good Nature’, Youthmovies have well and truly arrived.