Young Maverick are a four-piece melody-making outfit hailing from Melbourne.
They began playing together during the winter of 2009 and have been refining their musical style ever since. Their unique, happy-go-lucky, bash n crash style has led them to ignore all the usual genre labels, and instead encouraged them to create their own, which they have dubbed ‘Holiday Pop’.
After playing support slots with some of Australia’s finest up-and-comers including Big Scary, Loon Lake and Emperors, they headed into the studio to reward their growing fan-base with the release of their debut EP.
Enlisting the help of the amazing Matt Voigt (Oh Mercy, Big Scary), Young Maverick spent five days at Sing Sing and Abercorn studios recording and mixing some tracks that showcase the fun, summery blend of bouncy beats, dueling jangly guitars and funky bass lines that perfectly capture their Holiday Pop sound.
You’ve got a track featured on the Tunes For Change CD – in which all profits go to OzHarvest. How did you get involved in this project?
Luckily for us, Loon Lake had to pull out of a gig at the Openair cinema and recommended us to fill in for them. Tunes For Change has a partnership with these cinemas in a few states and chose their favourite acts to be on their latest CD so it was quite lucky for us and it’s been really great to be involved.
How does it feel using your talents for worthy causes such as Tunes For Change?
It feels great! Its not often that you have the opportunity as a musician to help other people, so to be able to do this through Tunes For Change has been very rewarding.
You also recently played a gig for “Partybags” – an event designed to showcase up and coming artists. How are the artists selected for these showcases?
Partybags is collaboration between some Melbourne music blogs and one of them had been keeping an eye on us for a while. When they were putting together the first show they asked us to be a part of it, and it was great.
Do you think events like this are beneficial for getting your music out there?
Definitely. Because the organisers are in the Melbourne music scene, the crowd were music lovers, other bloggers and various people who are actually involved in music which means the exposure and reception was awesome. It’s always nice to play to people who are keen to hear you play and keen to find new music that they love.
If you could play at any venue/festival where would it be?
Obviously all the major festivals overseas would be amazing. Glastonbury, Reading, Coachella, all of them would be awesome to be involved in, and even local festivals like Splendour are pretty sweet too.
Your debut EP (self titled) was released at the beginning of the year. Was it received the way you expected?
Yeah the reception has been great. Our first single ‘Reception Deception’ had a lot of interest from blogs all over the world and the follow up singles have all received airplay on Triple j Unearthed. It been good to promote the ‘holiday pop’ sound that we are pioneering, and the feedback we have had from people who have bought the CD has all been great.
Are there any plans for new music in the near future?
Just last week we headed into the studio to record some demos with the plan of releasing a single in the next few months. We are working hard on new material and at the moment the idea is to release a few singles throughout the year, and try to keep the buzz going for as long as we can before really thinking about doing an album.
Our debut EP came out at the start of the year so we are still promoting that, gigging as much as we can and trying to make some money so we can afford to do some more recordings for the fans!
Young Maverick’s style is described as ‘holiday pop’. What exactly does this mean listeners can expect from your tunes?
Holiday Pop was something that we came up with when we were thinking about how our music style had changed over time. What we play doesn’t really fit into the traditional genres of either Pop or Rock, and with ‘Indie’ being so widely used now we thought that using our own definition to describe our sound would be the best way to go.
The key thing about Holiday Pop is that it is more than just surf rock or summer pop, its more about the care-free feeling that holidays give you, and we try to capture that in our music.
What/who have been your major influences when creating music?
Our influences range from Beach House to Sonic the Hedgehog, very diverse. We often get told we sound like Vampire Weekend and Phoenix which is nice because we certainly love their stuff but I guess we are inspired by feelings more than other musicians.
How do you like your music? On digital, CD, or vinyl (maybe even cassette)?
We would love to produce some vinyl because it has that warmth to it but its too expensive for us unfortunately. All our tunes are available on both CD and digital which is probably the preferred because it makes it so much easier to share and get your music out to more people.
Where can we catch you playing next?
At the moment we have a few of the boys overseas so our next show will be August 29 at the Evelyn, playing with Agility for their residency. Should be a good welcome back for the travellers!
To download Tunes For Change currents recording go to: tunesforchange.org
