| Page 1 2 HIDDEN IN A SKELETON JAR by Adam M. Anklewicz Australian indie-rock combo Youth Group have been making some waves in America, thanks to the success of their second album, Skeleton Jar, which is also their first North American release.Youth Group was formed in 1998 by primary songwriter and guitarist Toby Martin and drummer Danny Allen. Though the band has seen a lot of line up changes in their bass players and guitarists, Martin and Allen are still going strong seven years and two albums later. Danny Allen was kind enough to chat with Being There over the telephone from Ann Arbor, Michigan about their music, the history of the band and their highs and lows. Currently joining Allen and Martin are Cameron Emerson-Elliot on guitar and former Vines member Patrick Matthews on bass. Toby Martin is from Canberra and played many local shows there with his band The Velvetines. Allen had met the band before in Sydney and recalled, “Their bass player and drummer were a bit reluctant to start playing in Sydney a lot more. Sydney and Melbourne [is where you need to play in Australia], otherwise there’s just not enough people to sustain bands in the smaller areas. It’s about a three-hour drive from Sydney to Canberra so it was a little bit difficult, and they decided at one point that they just weren’t going to do it. There was one gig that they just didn’t turn up to and that was the last straw.” The band ceased to be and Toby Martin decided to form a new band, asking drummer Danny Allen (who had only just recently bought his first drumkit) to join. A few months later, the band were about to play their first show but still didn’t even have a band name. Allen remembers, “A guy who worked at our label chose our name for us. We couldn’t decide on a name ourselves, so they just wrote it down for the first gig. We didn’t bother changing it, and if we did later, the 20 people that bothered to come see us, wouldn’t come again.”  Youth Group’s first release, Urban & Eastern, was released in 2001 on the tiny Australian label Ivy League. It’s currently unavailable throughout the world, however according to Allen Epitaph is looking to release it in North America now that the band has developed a following. “Skeleton Jar was a big transition for us. It was almost like starting over again. I reckon that [Urban & Eastern] definitely sounds a bit younger.” Their sound has changed since that first album, especially the sound of the rhythm section. Allen says, “our new bass player Patrick, he’s been fantastic. I was trying to do [the rhythm] on my own before. He’s very much a bass player that plays in the rhythm section. Our previous bass players, though fantastic, have always been playing separate to [the drums].”Page 1 2 |  |
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