Young The Giant Reflect On New Album ‘Victory Garden’

Multi-platinum band Young the Giant have released their highly anticipated new album, Victory Garden. Produced by Brendan O’Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, AC/DC, Pearl Jam) and Young the Giant, and written by the band collectively, the project is both ambitiously universal and deeply personal. Victory Garden asserts hope and connection as acts of quiet resistance, cultivating radical empathy and optimism in the face of an uncertain world. The album marks the band’s first full-length release since 2022’s American Bollywood. Sameer Gadhia (lead vocals, percussion, keyboards, rhythm guitar) and Eric Cannata (rhythm guitar, backing vocals, keyboards, tenor ukulele) talk to Hi Fi Way about the new album.

It’s great to be talking to you. Congratulations on Victory Garden, truly remarkable album. For me personally, it’ll be one of my favourite albums this year. It really is something.
Sameer: Thank you.

How does it feel now that it’s out, all that hard work and toil that’s gone into it? Does it feel like triumph now that you can celebrate it more?
Sameer: Yeah, definitely. For me, we finished the record last summer, so we wanted to let it spread its wings and go out into the world. I feel a sense of relief that it’s finally out and not cooped up in a cage somewhere.

How did you celebrate release day? Did you do anything special to mark the occasion?
Eric: We had an album‑release celebration party in West LA, in Venice. We performed seven of the new songs stripped down with a few string players, which was really fun. Had some tacos and celebrated that way. We also did a flower truck, gave out bouquets of flowers to people on the street in West LA, just trying to spread joy and celebration.

Five albums in, do they get any easier?
Sameer: The writing and recording fluctuates. Right now we’re in a kind of renaissance as a band creatively and how we work together. We have fun writing music together, that’s the stuff within our control. The process of releasing work into the world doesn’t get easier. It’s such a vulnerable place. But once it’s out there, there’s that sense of relief. It’s wild. American Bollywood was almost four years ago, and before that almost four years between Mirror Master. This is our sixth album, but in the last eight years we’ve only put out two records.

When you say you’re going through a renaissance, does that give you more energy to keep writing? Or is it more like, album’s done, time to tour, and you’ll think about the next one later?
Eric: We feel generally inspired. We have a US and Canada tour coming up, but when we have downtime, it’s fun for us to write. The process of writing together is enjoyable and inspired right now. The way we wrote this record, going on writing retreats to Idyllwild and Joshua Tree for a few writing retreats was really fun. But there’s also the balance of living life, touring, performing, feeling the songs out with a crowd. If you’re just writing nonstop, you can hit a stale moment where you are just writing, writing, writing. We are feeling fresh so it’s a good time to go out, play these new songs, and then come back fresh having some downtime and find new creative ways to get in the writing room again.

How important were those writing retreats? Did they influence the end result of the album?
Sameer: Yeah, they were essential. Every record we take stock and figure out the best way to approach it, because it changes as we change as human beings as well get older. There’s more things to work around. In the beginning we would rent places together and live together for several years. and lost that space. We bought this band house and built a studio there there and did a lot of American Bollywood there, and even wrote a few songs from this record there. We were all realising that all living in LA, life and responsibility was constantly there. We’d go in frequently but not get as much done. So we thought: what if we maroon ourselves somewhere? Get in deep together, and work intensively for a week, rent an Airbnb together. Reconnect and get in the studio together intensively for a week. We did four of those, and that’s most of the record.

Working with Brendan O’Brien, that’s got to be significant. How was that experience?
Eric: Working with Brendan was an incredible experience. He’s done so many iconic records and has so much experience working with bands. A big thing for us on this record was getting out of our heads, we can overthink, and with five of us bouncing ideas around, maybe we have go too far or the momentum s being drained by the obsessiveness of how far you can take something. Brendan was amazing at quelling that overthought and keeping the ball rolling. We trusted him as a mentor and now as a friend. We really looked up to him. He kept the energy moving, and it was a joy to work with him. Working with Brendan it was easy to trust the process and he kept the ball rolling in the studio and keeps the energy moving. It was a joy to work with him and he captured the band in the way we wanted to be captured, the idea of a record is a true record of where we’re at and he captured that perfectly.

As the album was starting to take shape, did that excitement really start to build knowing you had a special group of songs?
Sameer: Yeah, I think we all talked about it a lot and still do. It’s just a feeling you get, we’ve been around in our career long enough to trust that feeling within us. It’s an excitement and we were having fun writing and recording the music, and every time we listened back we just had that feeling. And that feeling is continuing to roll forward, and we’ll see where it goes.

I described the album as a perfectly woven tapestry, it all hangs together beautifully. How agonising was it getting the songs in the right order so it flows from start to end?
Eric: This album was a bit of a puzzle with track sequencing. I remember, we went back and forth more than we usually do. It was trial and error right up to the eleventh hour. We moved things around until the very last second. There was a final swap where we switched Ships Passing and initially This Too Shall Pass was going to end Side A on vinyl and Ships Passing was going to start Side B, but we flipped them. And Already There and Bitter Fruit swapped at the last second too, and those two suddenly the puzzle was finished.

Sameer: It’s like c’mon, we need to press this shit!

Eric: The amount of times, like any band, the amount of times we’ve listened to this record, we want it to feel fresh when we go to perform it. By nature when you try to make the best track listing you can each of us at that point in time have listened to so many different track orders so many times. It is one of those things that the more you do this, and we talk about this, but you know you know. When you know the track listing feels right to all five of us, we know. We know when this one feels right. I think this particular track list we got right.

Which songs really pull at the heartstrings for you?
Sameer: For me, Ships Passing. It’s opaque but has a nostalgia to it, it feels personal to me and to the band, but each person who listens to it can take their own meaning from it. At the end of a record process, it’s usually an emotional process, I ended up tearing up a bit during some of the songs sometimes. Hearing the Evergreen bridge work the way we wanted also hit me emotionally. There are tons of moments Life Is A Long Goodbye feels like the perfect ender.

Even the artwork, I think you nailed it and really does speak to the album. How many designs did you go through to get that front cover right?
Eric: We went through a few historic black‑and‑white photos. The album deals with juxtapositions between love over fear, life over death, so we wanted the artwork to balance groundedness with playfulness. Everyone else in the band outside of myself has young kids, so the text looks almost looks like a child painted this, but we grounded it with a historic photo. We went through a few of them but when we landed on the final one, it felt truest to the feeling of what we were trying to express as a band when making this record. We went in to the weeds. With Ships Passing, my favourite, lyrically these verses were going deep in to the psyche, it wasn’t all sunshine and butterflies. It was coming together as a band and we were helping each other through difficult times in our lives. That particular photo of someone in catharsis felt like where we’re trying to get to as people. The album is our reminder that we can get there, we feel that there is hope, and feel this catharsis after this emotional struggle.

Five albums now, that makes the set list even more complicated. How much of the new album are you looking to play live on tour?
Sameer: We’re trying to work through the set list and we had a four‑hour meeting about the set and ways we can incorporate a lot from across all the records. But we definitely intend to play a good amount, if not all, of the new album at certain moments.

Any plans to return to Australia? You were fantastic out here with Bloc Party last year.
Eric: I don’t know if anything is set in stone, but there are plans in the works. We’re trying to get back as soon as possible on this record and continue touring in Australia. We absolutely loved being out there with Bloc Party and doing Australia and New Zealand, it was a blast.

Interview By Rob Lyon

VICTORY GARDEN – OUT NOW
https://link.youngthegiant.com/victorygarden