YOUNG GUN SILVER FOX
PLEASURE -COLOURED-
Label: LEGERE RECORDS
Releasedatum: 02-05-2025
Herkomst: NL
Item-nr: 4759511
EAN: 4026424013477
Levertijd: Verwacht op 02-05
Recensie
Young Gun Silver Fox is een Brits muziekduo, bestaande uit Shawn Lee en Andy Platts. Ze maken vanaf 2012 samen muziek en het is goed te horen dat ze zich hebben laten inspireren door de zogenaamde West Coast muziek uit de jaren 70 en 80. Zo hoor ik af en toe invloeden vanuit the Doobie Brothers en the Eagles. Inmiddels zijn ze toe aan hun 5e album, Pleasure. En wat de naam al zegt, het is een aangenaam album om naar te luisteren. Verwacht geen nieuwigheden van deze groep. Het is gewoon heerlijke muziek om op bij te werken, zoals ik nu doe. De stemmen van beide heren passen perfect bij elkaar en ook op dit album zitten weer enkele pareltjes zoals het openingsnummer ‘Stevie & Sly’ en ‘the greatest lover’. (Jurrien van Rheed)
INTERVIEW
YOUNG GUN SILVER FOX
Shawn Lee (Wichita, Kansas en multi-instrumentalist pur sang) en Andy Platts (Londen, ook bekend van Mamas Gun) zijn een transatlantisch duo dat zich lijkt te hebben gevonden in de Pacific - zo zonnig is hun muziek. Of Yacht Rock, hoe het gekscherend/liefkozend (kies je eigen associatie) ook wel wordt genoemd. Met Pleasure zijn ze alweer toe aan hun vijfde album, maar de jeu de vivre en passie voor hun strakke retrosoul sound stijgt nog altijd met de temperatuur van de aarde mee! We spraken hun op een, voor hen veel te druilerige ochtend middenin het grauwe Sloterdijkgebied van Amsterdam. Maar zelfs dat mag de pret niet drukken. Hawaii-blouses aan en gaan met die banaan. (In het Engels / Door: Stef Mul)
“ It's like opening a door into a whole other dimension, and it feels real. It’s a human thing.”
Let’s dive into the concept op Yacht Rock, if that's alright with you. Where did your fascination with the music affiliated with yachts, sunshine and the West Coast start?
Shawn Lee: Speaking for myself, I mean, I sort of grew up in that era, and when the music came out, So I think it was just the music was on the radio But it was very musical, you know. It just sounded great. It's great musicians. Yeah, great singing. I mean just quality. Jazzy. Yeah. Yeah, it was sophisticated. And it was all over the radio. I can remember Steely Dan sort of being the perfect band in a way for me. They combined hit singles with high quality musicianship, the highest kind of art. It works on all the right levels, being commercial music but music for musicians as well. And I just thought if you could do that, you just fucking I'm gonna get all the girls, all the awards all the girls, you know. All the groovy things of the world would be yours haha!
Andy Platts: I came into it later in life. And I was obviously familiar with all the big hits of the genre and stuff.
But I love that kind of music because it has all the things that I love about creating music. It's a place where many musical rivers meet, you know, you've got the classic pop, pop rock, it's got soul in there, it's got the bass lines, it's got grooves, but it can go from like Crosby, Stills and Nash acoustics, loads of harmonies and sunshine to the more jazzy stuff or just straight ahead pop rock. It's so wide open. As a songwriter, there's so much to enjoy.
Who do you consider the staples of the genre for you? Who are the guys who really wrote the DNA?
Lee: I think in a Steely Dan was like the kind of proto thing and obviously they changed as they went along. Maybe when they got to Asia, that was the moment when it became firmly a thing. But I would say Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers with Michael McDonald. I think you've got to mention Earth, Wind & Fire. All those guys loved Earth, Wind & Fire, who were more marketed as a soul band. The Doobie Brothers, through Michael McDonald primarily, were really into black music and as such it became a crossover, also through personnel like David Foster en Jay Graydon. That’s how this music thing worked and that's a really important thing. For Steely, the Doobies and Bobby Caldwell and those kind of people. It gave it that kind of slickness and that kind of groove. O, and I have to mention And there’s the real strong jazz influence. Yeah, well, to the tastes of the era. Yeah. Allow for more of a certain kind of sophistication as well. That makes this music what it is. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely like a lot of jazz harmony in the chords and stuff. those guys were like, they were all like, kind of like jazzers, you know, I mean, and I think also some of the Quincy Jones stuff, you know, like the Brothers Johnson and the early Michael Jackson records sort of were very West Coast and they had a lot of the same players and. Gimme Tonight, you know, George Benson, that's a classic of the genre. Lee Rittenour, you know, Is It You with Eric Tagg, I mean, that's a classic of the genre. Just so many great... And also, we really like the whole more acoustic side, like Ned Dehaney in America, and Professor Nash, and all that kind of things. I think that's always in there as well.
Both of you are really two busy bees, working on so many projects in front of and behind the scenes. How does the process of writing and recording with the two of you, Young Gun, Silver Fox, differ from the other projects and when do you guys know it's time for a new album?
Lee: I think, for me, it’s really simple. I like to make music, I like to record music write music and so I'm always doing that and I do it for the same reason I always do it and that’s because I want to do it haha! The only difference with Young Gun Silver Fox is that it's it's two of us, you know. When we're together, it turns into something else I mean it's a it's it's something that's more than than me and him, you know what I mean? You can't explain it all, you can try but... It's something that independently neither of us can touch. It's like if you have multiple shelves on your wall and you get some shit there and some shit on that one. We sit at the top of the shelf and there's nothing else on that shelf. There's nothing else there and nothing else is ever gonna get there. It kind of sets its own space, you know, and I'm quite happy about that. It sort of ticks every box for me, you know, it's just all in there, I mean the music just has so much in it that's good, and it's fun to do, it's challenging to do, you know. It just wins on every criteria for me. It's like going on a real good holiday.
Platt: Yeah, it's a lovely thing to do. I think with a lot of other projects which are, for want of a better word, like commercial projects, there is a large part of creating something that you think people want to hear, for that artist or for that project. With this, that would be dangerous to do, you know. Creating something that you think people want from you. We're doing it because there's no one else competing with us and we only have our back catalogue to look at. So it's, yeah, that's what we're competing with. For me, it's a lovely thing to have something that works, that really works. If you get any kind of success at this game, you're in a privileged position.
Lee: Part of what you're also doing is entertaining people through their life with whatever you're doing, which is the essence of a big part of our work. To give someone something to escape to, yeah.
Are there any differences regarding this particular album compared to the other ones? I've read about you were together, in the same room, more than before?
Platt: Yeah, up until this album we'd really only worked independently and sent files to each other. I don't live in London anymore, Sean lives in London, I live out in the country. But off the back of this last tour before Christmas, we had some songs that we did in that old process. But I was a bit worried, I was like, I don't know what this is, I don't know what these songs are, I don't know what this album is, come to my studio and let's just get it finished. It was the 15th of December and the album was due end of January… But it was incredibly focused. We spent four days recording and got the album finished. Something about that forced us to bring our best ideas, to just engage, to the source, to bring something different to the table that we hadn't done before.
Lee: I think it was the limited time available to finish something and the pressure of that which really focused it. There's no going back now. Yeah, this is the way we're gonna do it. Well, at least for the next one, definitely. We made half the record like this, but we're gonna do the whole record. Yeah!
Stealing Time and The Greatest Loser are standout tracks for me. I was wondering what they’re about and how they fit into the escapism part of your music?
Platt: There's a couple of different implications there. With the kind of yacht rock music from back in the day, a lot of it is about love. I think the fact that we're speaking and singing about things that aren't about being heartbroken or asking someone to be your baby, makes it more interesting and gives it a depth. The Greatest Loser was a song about David Cameron, after he decided to fuck the UK with proposing the Brexit vote.
So there's a certain kind of anger in the Paradise you've created on this album?
Platt: It's an open forum. The sounds are always gonna be lush pleasure. Yeah, it's always gonna be that you can enjoy it on that level, but if you want to go dig under the lyrics and see what's happening, or even musically, you'll find something with a bit more substance. Stealing Time was a conversation I had with a 90-year-old woman in New York for an hour. She said, one of the last things she said: you've got to steal time in this life. You've got to steal time for your kids and your music and for yourself and don't work too hard. So, I always like that concept, and that's what the song touches on, you know.
There sure is a form of timelessness to your music. A sense of nostalgia, maybe.
Lee: A lot of the instruments and stuff, the sounds, they're classic sounds. Musically it has a lot of meat on the bone and it you know it's very different from modern pop music, which is they've they've stripped mind out it all. Yeah, there's hardly any musical information in there. It's just hooks. Our music is the exact polar opposite and so it has a freshness, you know, because it's so different, that when people hear it that are younger think: wow, there's a lot in this. It's like opening a door into a whole other dimension, and it feels real. It’s a human thing. Maybe that’s why people feel like it's timeless. And we're not talking about cell phones and stuff that would date it very quickly.
Are there certain things and instruments and equipment you use to recreate the right AOR sound, the right Yacht Rock sound?
Lee: There’s the standard stuff: the use of the phaser in both the Rhodes and the guitar. The electric piano is like an important sound in this music. The fat snare sound is important. The single headed toms. It's all about the configurations of that signal chain. I always think of Jeff Beck, I read that half the time he didn't use his own guitar when he toured, he'd just turn up in whatever city and get Fender to send over a stock Strat and he'd just play that and of course he sounded like Jeff Beck, because he knows what to fucking do with it, you know. All the gear and all the signal chains and all the pedals in the world won't do it for you, unless you know what you're doing with it.
INTERVIEW
YOUNG GUN SILVER FOX
Shawn Lee (Wichita, Kansas en multi-instrumentalist pur sang) en Andy Platts (Londen, ook bekend van Mamas Gun) zijn een transatlantisch duo dat zich lijkt te hebben gevonden in de Pacific - zo zonnig is hun muziek. Of Yacht Rock, hoe het gekscherend/liefkozend (kies je eigen associatie) ook wel wordt genoemd. Met Pleasure zijn ze alweer toe aan hun vijfde album, maar de jeu de vivre en passie voor hun strakke retrosoul sound stijgt nog altijd met de temperatuur van de aarde mee! We spraken hun op een, voor hen veel te druilerige ochtend middenin het grauwe Sloterdijkgebied van Amsterdam. Maar zelfs dat mag de pret niet drukken. Hawaii-blouses aan en gaan met die banaan. (In het Engels / Door: Stef Mul)
“ It's like opening a door into a whole other dimension, and it feels real. It’s a human thing.”
Let’s dive into the concept op Yacht Rock, if that's alright with you. Where did your fascination with the music affiliated with yachts, sunshine and the West Coast start?
Shawn Lee: Speaking for myself, I mean, I sort of grew up in that era, and when the music came out, So I think it was just the music was on the radio But it was very musical, you know. It just sounded great. It's great musicians. Yeah, great singing. I mean just quality. Jazzy. Yeah. Yeah, it was sophisticated. And it was all over the radio. I can remember Steely Dan sort of being the perfect band in a way for me. They combined hit singles with high quality musicianship, the highest kind of art. It works on all the right levels, being commercial music but music for musicians as well. And I just thought if you could do that, you just fucking I'm gonna get all the girls, all the awards all the girls, you know. All the groovy things of the world would be yours haha!
Andy Platts: I came into it later in life. And I was obviously familiar with all the big hits of the genre and stuff.
But I love that kind of music because it has all the things that I love about creating music. It's a place where many musical rivers meet, you know, you've got the classic pop, pop rock, it's got soul in there, it's got the bass lines, it's got grooves, but it can go from like Crosby, Stills and Nash acoustics, loads of harmonies and sunshine to the more jazzy stuff or just straight ahead pop rock. It's so wide open. As a songwriter, there's so much to enjoy.
Who do you consider the staples of the genre for you? Who are the guys who really wrote the DNA?
Lee: I think in a Steely Dan was like the kind of proto thing and obviously they changed as they went along. Maybe when they got to Asia, that was the moment when it became firmly a thing. But I would say Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers with Michael McDonald. I think you've got to mention Earth, Wind & Fire. All those guys loved Earth, Wind & Fire, who were more marketed as a soul band. The Doobie Brothers, through Michael McDonald primarily, were really into black music and as such it became a crossover, also through personnel like David Foster en Jay Graydon. That’s how this music thing worked and that's a really important thing. For Steely, the Doobies and Bobby Caldwell and those kind of people. It gave it that kind of slickness and that kind of groove. O, and I have to mention And there’s the real strong jazz influence. Yeah, well, to the tastes of the era. Yeah. Allow for more of a certain kind of sophistication as well. That makes this music what it is. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely like a lot of jazz harmony in the chords and stuff. those guys were like, they were all like, kind of like jazzers, you know, I mean, and I think also some of the Quincy Jones stuff, you know, like the Brothers Johnson and the early Michael Jackson records sort of were very West Coast and they had a lot of the same players and. Gimme Tonight, you know, George Benson, that's a classic of the genre. Lee Rittenour, you know, Is It You with Eric Tagg, I mean, that's a classic of the genre. Just so many great... And also, we really like the whole more acoustic side, like Ned Dehaney in America, and Professor Nash, and all that kind of things. I think that's always in there as well.
Both of you are really two busy bees, working on so many projects in front of and behind the scenes. How does the process of writing and recording with the two of you, Young Gun, Silver Fox, differ from the other projects and when do you guys know it's time for a new album?
Lee: I think, for me, it’s really simple. I like to make music, I like to record music write music and so I'm always doing that and I do it for the same reason I always do it and that’s because I want to do it haha! The only difference with Young Gun Silver Fox is that it's it's two of us, you know. When we're together, it turns into something else I mean it's a it's it's something that's more than than me and him, you know what I mean? You can't explain it all, you can try but... It's something that independently neither of us can touch. It's like if you have multiple shelves on your wall and you get some shit there and some shit on that one. We sit at the top of the shelf and there's nothing else on that shelf. There's nothing else there and nothing else is ever gonna get there. It kind of sets its own space, you know, and I'm quite happy about that. It sort of ticks every box for me, you know, it's just all in there, I mean the music just has so much in it that's good, and it's fun to do, it's challenging to do, you know. It just wins on every criteria for me. It's like going on a real good holiday.
Platt: Yeah, it's a lovely thing to do. I think with a lot of other projects which are, for want of a better word, like commercial projects, there is a large part of creating something that you think people want to hear, for that artist or for that project. With this, that would be dangerous to do, you know. Creating something that you think people want from you. We're doing it because there's no one else competing with us and we only have our back catalogue to look at. So it's, yeah, that's what we're competing with. For me, it's a lovely thing to have something that works, that really works. If you get any kind of success at this game, you're in a privileged position.
Lee: Part of what you're also doing is entertaining people through their life with whatever you're doing, which is the essence of a big part of our work. To give someone something to escape to, yeah.
Are there any differences regarding this particular album compared to the other ones? I've read about you were together, in the same room, more than before?
Platt: Yeah, up until this album we'd really only worked independently and sent files to each other. I don't live in London anymore, Sean lives in London, I live out in the country. But off the back of this last tour before Christmas, we had some songs that we did in that old process. But I was a bit worried, I was like, I don't know what this is, I don't know what these songs are, I don't know what this album is, come to my studio and let's just get it finished. It was the 15th of December and the album was due end of January… But it was incredibly focused. We spent four days recording and got the album finished. Something about that forced us to bring our best ideas, to just engage, to the source, to bring something different to the table that we hadn't done before.
Lee: I think it was the limited time available to finish something and the pressure of that which really focused it. There's no going back now. Yeah, this is the way we're gonna do it. Well, at least for the next one, definitely. We made half the record like this, but we're gonna do the whole record. Yeah!
Stealing Time and The Greatest Loser are standout tracks for me. I was wondering what they’re about and how they fit into the escapism part of your music?
Platt: There's a couple of different implications there. With the kind of yacht rock music from back in the day, a lot of it is about love. I think the fact that we're speaking and singing about things that aren't about being heartbroken or asking someone to be your baby, makes it more interesting and gives it a depth. The Greatest Loser was a song about David Cameron, after he decided to fuck the UK with proposing the Brexit vote.
So there's a certain kind of anger in the Paradise you've created on this album?
Platt: It's an open forum. The sounds are always gonna be lush pleasure. Yeah, it's always gonna be that you can enjoy it on that level, but if you want to go dig under the lyrics and see what's happening, or even musically, you'll find something with a bit more substance. Stealing Time was a conversation I had with a 90-year-old woman in New York for an hour. She said, one of the last things she said: you've got to steal time in this life. You've got to steal time for your kids and your music and for yourself and don't work too hard. So, I always like that concept, and that's what the song touches on, you know.
There sure is a form of timelessness to your music. A sense of nostalgia, maybe.
Lee: A lot of the instruments and stuff, the sounds, they're classic sounds. Musically it has a lot of meat on the bone and it you know it's very different from modern pop music, which is they've they've stripped mind out it all. Yeah, there's hardly any musical information in there. It's just hooks. Our music is the exact polar opposite and so it has a freshness, you know, because it's so different, that when people hear it that are younger think: wow, there's a lot in this. It's like opening a door into a whole other dimension, and it feels real. It’s a human thing. Maybe that’s why people feel like it's timeless. And we're not talking about cell phones and stuff that would date it very quickly.
Are there certain things and instruments and equipment you use to recreate the right AOR sound, the right Yacht Rock sound?
Lee: There’s the standard stuff: the use of the phaser in both the Rhodes and the guitar. The electric piano is like an important sound in this music. The fat snare sound is important. The single headed toms. It's all about the configurations of that signal chain. I always think of Jeff Beck, I read that half the time he didn't use his own guitar when he toured, he'd just turn up in whatever city and get Fender to send over a stock Strat and he'd just play that and of course he sounded like Jeff Beck, because he knows what to fucking do with it, you know. All the gear and all the signal chains and all the pedals in the world won't do it for you, unless you know what you're doing with it.
