Electric Youth Have No Interest In Reviving the Past

“We’re not conjoined at the hip,” says 28-year-old Austin Garrick on the phone from Hamilton. The hip he is referring to belongs to 29-year old Bronwyn Griffin, Garrick’s girlfriend and musical partner for the past decade. Since the inception of their band Electric Youth in 2009, the two have been plagued by misrepresentations of both themselves and their art.

“We really have no interest in recreating the past,” says Garrick commenting on the band’s sound. Often pegged as trying to revive the 80s, Electric Youth’s music goes much deeper than most give it credit for. Their debut album, Innerworld, is a heart-warming narrative of discovery and innocence. Although oozing with synthesizers, Innerworld manages to transcend a particular moment in time to become something universally recognizable. This feat can be credited to the fact that the couple have known each other since their playground days.

Meeting in the sixth grade, it wasn’t until two years later that Garrick muscled up the courage to ask Griffin out. Since that time the two have been a united front. Inspired by films such as American Beauty, The Aviator and Videodrome, the pair decided to express their expanding creativity through music. Four years after Electric Youth’s formation, the band was signed to Last Gang Records, and has now released Innerworld worldwide. It's been a long trip through the creation of this album, and they're finally happy to see it come to a conclusion, even if there remain some misconceptions about everything.

Noisey: What was it like growing up in Hamilton?
Austin Garrick: Coming from Toronto, which is more of a cultural hub, it was a bit of a culture shock. You realize that things you see and know of growing up in a bigger city, smaller city kids are not really aware of. As an adult I’ve come to appreciate Hamilton more. Whenever we spend time out here I like it, but Toronto I love. Maybe I’m biased, but it’s one of my favourite cities in the world. Especially when it’s not winter.
Bronwyn Griffin: Growing up in Hamilton, I really enjoyed it. I think it’s a beautiful city. There’s lots of amazing families here and the schools are great. But, when I got old enough to visit Toronto myself, you really do notice a huge difference in terms of multiculturalism. As I got older, I realized that Hamilton didn’t really have it all.

Who were your musical influences growing up?
Garrick: For me, it really started with the music that my parents listened to. On my mom’s side, that was a lot of synth-pop. Things like Yaz and the stuff that was the hits four or five years earlier, that she now had on cassette tapes. On my dad’s side, he listened to some of that stuff, but also a lot of reggae and Level 42 and Phil Collins. That was what laid the foundation musically for me in my household.
Griffin: I was raised in a religious household, but didn’t follow it as later years came around. There was a lot of inspirational music, but on top of that my Dad listened to James Taylor and The Beatles. Later it was The Cranberries. Gordon Lightfoot was a huge favourite of mine as a kid. Our musical influences opened up from there as we got older.

When did you two realize you wanted to form a band together?
Garrick: We had already known each other a long time before we came to that conclusion. It was about five years ago, and at that point we’d known each other since we were 10 years old. It was a spur of the moment idea, and after some time it just turned into what it is now.

How did you two settle on the name Electric Youth?
Garrick: There’s actually a big misconception. It’s an assumption that was made from this Guardian article awhile ago. They assume that we got it from Debbie Gibson, and that caught on as a thing. The truth is that we thought we came up with it ourselves. We liked the sound of it and thought it made sense. We Googled it of course, like any modern band, to see if there’s something else with this name. We found Debbie Gibson. We’d never heard of her at that point. She definitely had it first, but we didn’t realize that initially. We really have so much respect for her, so we haven’t done a lot to dispel that assumption, but we’re kind of tired of it now. I think we want to start letting people know that’s not actually where we got it.

What’s another misconception you’ve found about your band?
Garrick: It’s a big one and definitely understandable. People think we’re a lot more about making 80s sounding stuff. If that’s what they get out of it and they enjoy it, then cool. But the truth is, it’s really not an intention of ours. We have our influences like any band does, and to an extent you inadvertently wear those on your sleeves. We’ve never set out to make something sound super 80s or retro. We love music from the past, but why would we try to do it again? I think our intent and what we try to do, is a lot more future forward than what gets spoken about.

Synthesizers haven’t been around as long as guitars. They haven’t been able to become part of the musical landscape that people clearly understand. I think we’re getting closer to that front with synthesizers, but it’s still a relatively new addition to the world of music. It’s only been around since the 80s, so I think those associations are still there and we’ve gotten lumped in as something that tries to draw from that era. That would probably be the biggest thing outside of being named after Gibson. Everyone’s entitled to their own interpretation of any art. If you’re in an art gallery and you’re looking at a painting, what you see is going to be different than from someone else. Our intentions are a little more for the now and future then the past.

Where did the title for the album come from?
Garrick: As far as we know, it’s another word we made up. To us it means a word for the world inside, and that was the world we focused on shaping the album around. As opposed to the world that everybody sees with their eyes, it’s a bit more internal and looks different to every person.

Which song gave you the most trouble to record?
Garrick: On the deluxe edition there’s a song called “Modern Fears,” that was pretty challenging. There’s another song called “Tomorrow” that took us awhile to get right. A lot of that was on the production side. It’s something we take really seriously. It wasn’t without spending quite a bit of time on all the record, but “Tomorrow” definitely took more time to get right.

Where did the concept for the album artwork come from?
Garrick: Paul Roberts, one of my favourite artists. He first came to prominence in the late 70s and 80s. We discovered his work years ago. Before he was a painter, he was the front man of a group called Sniff ‘n’ Tears. Their best known song is “Driver’s Seat.” It played in this pivotal moment in the movie Boogie Nights. We always remembered that song. We came across the record and were so taken aback by the album covers for this group. Eventually one day we found that Paul was painting the covers. We reached out to him to see if he’d be interested. We had some concepts, and at that point we just had to trust him and leave it with him. Going back to the album title, it’s an image of fantasy. An internal feeling of how we feel sometimes in our minds, like two kids on an adventure. And in a weird sort of sappy way, a display of the world inside of us.
Griffin: I think it also has elements of escapism as well. A world untouched by man, and these two kids are venturing through it by themselves. It may be an imaginary world, it may be a real world. You don’t really know when you look at it. It’s yours to interpret.
Garrick: So far it seems like people either love it, or they’re like “what the fuck is this?” We’re happy there’s a reaction.

When listening to the album, I found that ideas of childhood and nostalgia were very prominent. I was wondering if you could explain that?
Garrick: It’s not conscious. We write from the heart. We’re inspired by life and the way we see life reflected in movies. I wouldn’t say it’s intentional that we made this whole album with a theme central to that. It’s just when you go into your mind and you think about—
Griffin: —The things that have affected you. Since Austin and I have grown up as kids together, we both went through a lot of life changes together. Naturally we experienced the same things and that was reflected on the album.
Garrick: I think those ideas on childhood are probably more on the forefront of our minds, because we spend almost every day with the person we’ve been around since we were 10 years old. When I look at Bronwyn, it’s still the kid I knew when I first moved to Hamilton. I think because of that, 10 years ago to us is not much different than last year.

How do you two separate the professional aspect of the band from your personal relationship?
Garrick: We’ve been lucky that it’s pretty seamless. It’s intertwined at this point. I don’t think we necessarily cope with it by keeping it very distinctly separate. I think certainly when we’re in situations where we’re touring, or really busy outside of the studio, we fall into the roles of band mates rather than something else. It’s become our lives.
Griffin: I think I can speak for Austin as well in that we both love what we do. We feel so grateful that we’re able to live our dream and work together. There’s little things along the way to be very honest, but we just get through them. I think what helps with that is Austin and I growing up together. We still managed to be individuals, and not merge into one personality. Along the way, we just made an effort to be who we are and not turn into a “we.” There’s no downside.

Aaron Morris is a writer living in Toronto who, somehow, does not have a Twitter.