The alternative rockers of Young the Giant took some time to reflect on their careers these past few years. But now, after going through a period of deep introspection, the band is finally sharing what they’ve been working on.
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On Friday, July 15, Young the Giant dropped ACT I: ORIGINS as the first part of their forthcoming four-part album titled American Bollywood.
“This record was carved through worldwide turbulence, and the displacement of normality pushed us all to grow while supporting each other,” lead vocalist Sameer Gadhia shared. “We spent over two years curating sounds and field recordings, threading the influence of the South Asian diaspora on Western music throughout the decades, and have created a universe for this story to belong.”
Listen to ACT I: ORIGINS HERE.
The next three parts of the band’s upcoming fifth studio album will be titled Exile, Battle, and Denouement. Read Gadhias’s full statement explaining American Bollywood below.
“It’s been over four years since Mirror Master. Since then, three of us became fathers, a global pandemic made it impossible for us to see you on tour, and we left the major record label system by exiting a previously career-spanning contract. By 2020, we had written a whole album, but in the wake of so much change, we were not only forced to re-evaluate what we wanted to say with our music but who we were as humans.
100 songs into the writing process, I wrote what would become the title-track: American Bollywood. The chorus came to me in a dream: ‘I’m not a perfect man; I never claimed to be. This life’s so hard living, but loving you is so easy.’ It was a line I imagined my grandfather saying to his son, and my father saying to me. Their sacrifice is my privilege; my guilt—my origin story. Now, what will I tell my son? What sacrifices will I make for true love?
So, we erased the whiteboard and started to tell the multi-generational saga of the American immigrant, and the origins, exiles, battles, and denouement of reclaiming our collective identity. This is not just the story of an Indian-American caught in between two worlds; it’s also our universal search to find meaning in chaos.
This record was carved through worldwide turbulence, and the displacement of normality pushed us all to grow while supporting each other… We spent over two years curating sounds and field recordings, threading the influence of the South Asian diaspora on Western music throughout the decades, and have created a universe for this story to belong.
Lastly, this act structure also spans the story of this band over the last decade and our desire to redefine ourselves. This marks our first independent YTG release under our newly penned label, Jungle Youth Records, where we will proudly own both our music and identity. We are so excited to share…”
Photo Credit: MK Sadler/Full Coverage Communications
