Review Fix chats with The Foxery vocalist and guitarist Cadillac Young, who discusses the band’s new album, “Unless,†set for a Sept. 9 release on Spartan Records. After several indie releases, tours and writing, the band worked with former Jimmy Eat World mixer J. Robbins to create what they call a message to their listeners.
Review Fix: How did the band come together?
Cadillac Young: Calvin started writing all of these sad, folky songs and needed people to back him. Travis joined up because of his stellar tambourine skills. I fell in love with the music they wrote and wanted to play with them. Calvin wanted to move the band in a louder direction and take his heavy heart to new heights so we began laying the ground work for all of these new ideas but we realized we were a few members short of accomplishing that goal so Cam came in on drums and gave us a groove unlike any we’d felt before. Kyle took over on bass so I could play guitar and then Steve was always around and hanging out with us, so we felt like it was silly not to just have him strap on a guitar and complete us. It went from a singer-songwriter oriented band to a full on wall of different takes on sound.
Review Fix: How did you guys all contribute to the name of the band?
Young: We didn’t. Calvin found it in a dictionary and felt like he was a super fox deserving of such a name so he chose it. Everyone else was handed that debt like being born into America.
Review Fix: How would you describe your sound?
Young: Picture six people, all with a rope tied around their waist. And each of those ropes tied together in the middle kind of looking like a ferris wheel or something. Now picture everyone standing up and running in opposite directions as hard as they can and just getting the wind knocked out of them. The bigger guys pull a little harder but still don’t go anywhere because they’re too weighed down. Then they realize, “Hey, let’s stop trying to go all these different directions and just start spinning in circles because that’ll be fun.” So we just started spinning together and focusing more on making do with what we’ve got instead of going all these other directions.
Review Fix: What do you think makes you different from everyone else?
Young: Every single human on the entire planet has experienced life differently. Even siblings growing up in the same house don’t perceive things the exact same way. So even though we might be influenced by certain bands or ideas, we’re attempting to express our personal thoughts and feelings so that’s what makes us different. Even if we somehow accidentally wrote the same exact song as another band, we’d have definitely reached that place in our own way and for our own reasons. Everybody’s different! The beauty of art is conveying our beautiful brains to the world and letting other people find new meanings in what we have created.
Review Fix: What song on the album do you think is most indicative of your sound?
Young: Every single one of them. Our sound has changed a lot since our last release and that has a ton to do with us growing as people outside of music. So as long as we plan on growing as people before we start writing again, we will hopefully never have a “sound.” Right now, we’re already all over the map. We use a lot of instruments and tones and dynamics and our “sound” was dark and confused for most of this record but no two songs sound like any other two songs on it.
Review Fix: What song has the best story behind it?
Young: The Sorrow! Calvin had written an old Foxery song (They Came Two By Two) that I’ve always loved and an old band I was in had a song that I had written with similar subject matter that we (The Foxery) wanted to re-write. Well one day we were jamming around and I jokingly started playing that song after my own ideas and we loved it. So we put the two songs together, made it fit the band as it is now and began fine tuning it. Then Kyle stepped in with some old writings he had from a previous band he was in and his words thematically and cadence-wise fit. So it’s really just recycled songs with Steve and Cam beefing it up.
Review Fix: What have you learned about yourself musically through this album?
Young: We love diatonic third harmonies!!!
Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of the year?
Young: Tour until our strings break, buy more strings and continue touring! We’re releasing Unless on Spartan Records and John wants us on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in early 2015. (No actual plans have been made for this but fingers are currently crossed).
Review Fix: How do you want “Unless” to be remembered?
Young: As a really good first album but definitely the worst in a discography spanning 40 years.
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