The Young Veins Take it Old School (7/20 Atlas NY Rooftop)

By drainu182 , Tags : The Young Veins
By Britnee Foreman

The new band, The Young Veins, have recently released their debut album “Take A Vacation” and did a roof top concert to promote the album. I got to be one of the lucky few to take in the empire state building as a backdrop to the dreamy 60’s pop inspired ensemble.

Even though this band is in its infancy, it can boast music veterans among its line up with Ryan Ross and Jon Walker, formerly of Panic! at the Disco sharing the vocal duties. Each also play guitar for the band in addition to Andy Soukal on bass, Nick White on the keyboard, and Nick Murray on the drums.

You can tell that the sound that influenced PATD’s last album, The Beatles, is still heavily influencing this new project. It has a dreamy, hazy vibe to it with funky bass lines intermittently cropping up throughout the album.

Even as they performed the kept the aesthetic in line with the sound with skinny suits and shaggy hair, it was groovy all around.

Just like its inspiration, the band’s sound is poppy and fun and great for the summer. It was fitting that this event be held outside on a warm summer’s night (with an open bar). It made for the perfect theme for the evening. The only way that it could be better is if it were the soundtrack to a Frankie and Annette movie, or maybe one of those old Elvis movies. Either way you get my gist. They’re totally the bee’s knees (did they say that in the 60s?).

You should buy the album, or even better — see a show; you will be happy you did. They tell fun stories in between songs. They are quite likeable and it’s good clean fun. I believe there was even an Otis Redding cover during the night.

They are fully committed to the sound and aesthetic of this long gone era, which I think is refreshing in contrast to the constant revival of the 80s (let it die already). It is bubblegum pop at its best, in the original form. It’s quite brilliant.

Read more: http://theaudioperv.com/2010/07/28/the-young-veins-take-it-old-school-720-atlas-ny-rooftop/#ixzz0vCF84nVI
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Name That Band!

By David Marchese on June 21, 2010 1:04 PM Comment

Welcome to the weekly SPIN.com feature “Name That Band!” in which we get the inside stories behind the mysterious monikers of some of our favorite artists. (See past episodes of Name That Band! here.)

This week: Panic! at the Disco offshoot Young Veins, who recently released their debut, Take A Vacation!

Why Young Veins: “At first, when we were throwing around names in the studio, we wanted to call the band the Veins,” recalls vocalist-guitarist Ryan Ross, “but there was already a band called that. So we just called it the Young Veins. We liked the ‘fresh blood’ connotation. But really the name is a Spinal Tapreference. There’s a part where the band is talking about when they were starting out. They were going to call themselves the Originals but that name was taken, so they call themselves the New Originals instead. So we’re sort of just playing off the idea of adding an adjective in front of a band name that already exists.”

Previously Rejected Names: “We thought about calling ourselves the New Things. We also thought the Band Names would’ve been funny.”

Best Band Names Ever: “The Chills. We wanted to use that one, too, but another band beat us to the punch by, like, thirty years. The Like is another good one, and not just because that’s the band my girlfriend [Elizabeth Berg] plays in.”

Worst Band Name Ever: “I don’t know if it’s the worst, but the Beatles is a pretty bad. It’s funny to think that the biggest band of all time has a name based on a bad pun. Maybe it was cool at the time.”

The Young Veins, ‘Take a Vacation!’ (One Haven)

The new album by The Young Veins, Take a Vacation! comes out tomorrow! If you want to listen to the album right now, head on over to The Young Veins’ Myspace page. Starting tomorrow, you can purchase the album on Amazon, FYE (for $7.99!), or iTunes.

And don’t forget, today is the last day to pre-order The Young Veins merchandise packages from Go Merch!

Keep checking this page for more exclusive Young Veins content and news!

Check it out at http://www.myspace.com/music

When Panic at the Disco dropped the exclamation point from their name, it was surely intended to signify a newfound maturity, or at least an evolution from the their emo-drenched beginnings — remember, the band became famous long before its members could even legally drink. But a mere change in punctuation wasn’t enough of a revision for songwriter-guitarist Ryan Ross and bassist Jon Walker. They wanted a new start entirely, which is what they got when they dropped out of Panic at the Disco last summer in order to launch the Young Veins.

One year later, they have a new album to show for it. ‘Take a Vacation!’ drops on June 8. Note the return of the exclamation point. As for the name of the lead single, ‘Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won’t,’ a comma is the only punctuation necessary as the song itself is a bit more mysterious than a direct emphatic declaration. “We wrote this song while being held captive in France,” Walker tells Spinner. “It could be about a few different things, but it’s probably about love.”

That might explain some of the ambiguity. Musically, the song is a throwback to vintage Californian pop music — it’s a summer classic in the making. Check it out below.

Apr 14 2010 6:52 AM EDT
The Young Veins’ Take A Vacation!: The Joke’s On You
Ryan Ross and Jon Walker emerge from Panic! at the Disco with a crackling new album, in Bigger Than the Sound.

By James Montgomery

Last month, as I stood in a half-filled Austin, Texas, dive bar watching Ryan Ross, Jon Walker and the rest of the Young Veins fumble and fuss with their vintage guitars and organs, I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for them. When Ross’ girlfriend (the Like’s Elizabeth “Z” Berg) began crawling around onstage, attempting to hook up her guitar pedals for him — because, as Ross would tell me later, he had “forgotten” his — I somehow felt a lot worse.

After all, this was Ryan Ross, the same kid I had watched stalk the stage at a sold-out (and very loud) arena in 2006, the same brilliant boy-child who had written one of my favorite albums of 2008. I had such high hopes for him. The sky truly seemed like it was the limit. But then, he left Panic! at the Disco, posed precariously close to a plate of well-manicured cocaine in a now-infamous photo and disappeared into the hills of Hollywood with Walker to work on a record that would presumably never see the light of day. Either Ross was getting truly terrible career advice, or he had fallen victim to the same thing that had snared so many before him: ego. He had believed the hype, had squandered all that potential and this Austin gig — and a thousand more just like it — would be his penance.

It was, for all intents and purposes, over for him.

Only, here’s the thing. While the Veins’ set that night wasn’t particularly excellent — it was, after all, only their third show to date — there was something there: a buoyant, playful charm and a jovial jolt, even if the guitars didn’t sound all that great and Ross’ voice got buried in the mix way too often. This didn’t feel the least bit like a funeral — quite the opposite, in fact. Ross and Walker cracked jokes and exchanged wry smiles, exuding the same vibe I got from them toward the end of Panic!’s lifespan. It was, in some small way, like they were still playing an arena (albeit an arena that smelled like beer) and that they were privy to a very secret joke, one they weren’t quite sure they wanted to share with the world.

Needless to say, I left the gig feeling a bit puzzled. But a few weeks later, back in New York and thoroughly deodorized, I finally understood what they were laughing about: I received an advance copy of the Veins’ debut album, Take a Vacation! (due June 8), a crackling, lightning-quick effort — 11 songs in just 29 minutes — that’s equal parts salty and sweet, heavily indebted to the past, unbelievably catchy and quite possibly the best joke you’ll hear all year. In other words, it’s pretty much everything I could ask for in a rock record, and then some.

Working with producers Rob Mathes and Alex Greenwald (formerly of Phantom Planet), Ross and Walker have made an album that is totally, 100 percent theirs. Holed up in Calabasas, California, they listened to a ton of old 45s, probably smoked some funny cigarettes, watched the sun rise, made bonfires in the hills, invited all their friends over to sing on the choruses and cranked out songs that bear no resemblance to the rock music of today (and, by logical extension, have positively no chance of getting played on modern rock radio). They took the parts of Panic! at the Disco’s last album that fans liked least — the strummy, sunny, really excellent ones (”Northern Downpour,” etc.) — and made an entire record of them. And they did this all basically because they wanted to. It’s their own private joke (or their own private psychedelic reel), one they eventually decided to share with the world. Buy only after they were good and ready to.

And that’s probably what I like most about Vacation! — the fact that it’s deeply personal, important mostly to Ross and Walker. These are the songs they’ve wanted to write, even while the other half of Panic! seemed headed in the opposite direction. And so, they left the band and did their own thing. Repercussions and public opinion be damned. There are plenty of great musical moments too — the “aah-aah-aahs” and undeniable chorus of “Cape Town,” the enchantment-under-the-sea-worthy ballad “Everyone but You,” the campy stomp of “The Young Veins (Die Tonight),” smoky and ebullient album-closer “Heart of Mine” — but it’s that dogged determination to do their own thing, even if it means a lifetime of fumbling with vintage guitars in Texas dive bars that stands out most to me.

It’s like Ross sings on “Other Girl,” just before the tune breaks out in a stony, sunrise-approved guitar solo: “You were right, I was wrong/ Like I always am, and you always are.” There are probably a million people he could be directing the line toward, only you know he doesn’t really care about any of them. He’s fumbling and stumbling to the beat of his own drummer now. Who cares about the future when you’ve got the past?