When Montreal-based synth pop band Young Galaxy headline Up Here's main stage at the Grand Theatre on Thursday they hope it will be a memorable experience for everyone in the room.
“What you want is that universal experience of forgetting time and place, and just being in the music,” said Catherine McCandless, the band's vocalist and keyboardist. “We definitely want an audience that will dance and cry and make out.”
Thursday's performance will be the band's first foray into Sudbury.
“We're looking forward to it,”said McCandless. “We would love to do more grassroots-style performances,” she added, referring to Up Here's status as a relatively new festival that celebrates a wide variety of artists from across Canada, and around the world.
The band will be in Sudbury at the heels of their fifth full-length album, "Falsework," released late last year.
McCandless, who is married to her bandmate Stephen Ramsay, was pregnant with their second child when they worked on the album.
“I felt wordless in my pregnancy,” she said. “It was interesting. I felt like all my creative energy was going to my stomach.”
But while she felt wordless, she also felt like she could “sing her guts out.”
McCandless said parenthood has given a new sense of urgency to her work, and has made the division between her home life and her job more tangible.
“I have this very strong grip on what I want in my work,” she said.
Now that Young Galaxy has existed for longer than a decade, she said it's easier for the band to reach its creative goals, and make the best of its limited time in the studio.
The new record also featured a unique collaboration with Giller Prize-winning author, Sean Michaels.
Michaels, who is also from Montreal, and a close friend to the band, wrote a short story, also called "Falsework," that took inspiration from, and helped inspire the creation of, the record.
“He was coming in and listening to demos, and reading lyrics in our studio,” McCandless said. “And at the same time he was sharing what he was writing and we were then writing new songs that had more to do with his short story.”
The short story features a nightclub called Enfin that helped inspire the album's danceability and that sense of losing one's self in the music.
The short story is available in its entirety on the band's website and is also featured in the inside jacket of the record's vinyl release.
Classical chamber duo The Visit, and Montreal's Foxtrott will open for Young Galaxy at the Grand Threatre, starting at 8 p.m. Thursday.
Thursday's festivities will also feature an earlier all-ages punk show at Zig's Bar, featuring Sudbury’s Bean Head & Donutboy, Yacht Patrol, Sik Rik as well as the pummeling mudslide of Toronto's HSY.
The Townehouse Tavern will host a later show, starting at 11:30 p.m., that will feature Toronto’s New Fries, the retro-futuristic darkness of Victoria’s Freak Heat Waves, and the shimmering post-rock bliss of Toronto’s Fresh Snow.
Visit UpHere.com for the full programming schedule, artist bios and ticket information.
