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Twenty years ago, Youth Group recorded Forever Young, a bittersweet anthem that’s wired as tightly to the hearts of gen X indie kids as a pacemaker. The 1984 original, from German band Alphaville, was a gloriously histrionic ode to cold war anxiety. But in Youth Group’s hands, synths were replaced by mellow guitar and the song was set to footage of kids skateboarding in Sydney in 1978. It was pure sun-dappled nostalgia that shot to No 1 on the Aria charts in 2006 after it was used on The OC.
So how does the band, now middle-aged, regard their biggest hit with the passing of time?
“We definitely have a love-hate relationship with it,” admits Toby Martin, he of the pensive vocals. “We were asked to do it by the musical director of The OC and we were hesitant. I’m very proud of it, but we also got a bit narky when people expected to hear it. Sometimes we didn’t play it in our set at all, which would go down pretty badly. Now, I feel much more relaxed about it.”
Martin looks every ounce the distinguished academic he is now, sitting in an empty lecture room at the University of Sydney where he’s Dr Martin, senior lecturer and program leader in contemporary music practice. He and the band – guitarist Cameron Emerson-Elliott, bassist Patrick Matthews and drummer Danny Lee Allen – are all parents now, with kids ranging from three to 18 years old. Their sixth album, Big Whoop, tackles fatherhood and the existential fear of death that comes with it.
“It turns out you can always find new angsty things to write about,” Martin says drily. “Angst doesn’t go away just because you get older.”
One thing Big Whoop has in common with Forever Young is a vein of nostalgia. Take the track Kim Deal, in which the titular Pixies and Breeders musician (patron saint of wannabe cool kids in the 90s) is used as a device to explore the teenage desire to get the hell out of your home town – Canberra, in Martin’s case.
“When I first heard the Breeders, I thought they were immensely exotic rock stars, but then when we started touring America we’d often play in towns that reminded me a bit of Canberra, but they were towns where some of our musical idols came from, like Dayton, Ohio,” Martin says of Deal’s home town. “We thought, oh yeah, right. Australia has trouble telling those exciting stories about things coming from quite ordinary places.”
Martin moved to Sydney after he and Emerson-Elliott made the three-hour pilgrimage from Canberra to Glebe one too many times. (Specifically, to Half a Cow Records.) Place is very important for Youth Group songs; Martin has “always set songs in specific places, and namechecked streets and suburbs.”
That sense of place instigated my own enjoyment of the band. I first heard Youth Group circa Forever Young when I was living in London with my Australian husband, about to emigrate. Their tender guitars and yearning vocals seemed symbolic of this new life I was already pining for. Once in Sydney, we settled in the band’s stomping ground, Newtown, and sometimes shyly spotted them in the Courthouse on Australia Street, the street where Martin lived.
“I’m glad we were doing good ambassadorial work,” says Martin. He has settled in the inner west once again after a stint as a lecturer at the University of Huddersfield. Some UK influences came home with him: tracks such as When I Was have a distinct touch of Manchester’s New Order, prompting the band to coin the phrase “Sydchester” for this album.
Another influence on Martin’s lyrics is the short story – particularly those by Helen Garner, Lorrie Moore and Raymond Carver. It’s noticeable in the Bildungsroman track The Joke (which ends with the precocious protagonist “Laughing, quoting Paul Keating / And the best bits of Sarah Silverman”). Then there are the parental perspectives: Romeo (“based on a few meetings at school”) and Saturday Dad – a critique of fathers who put in minimal effort and expect to win player of the match when they do.
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The centrepiece is Don’t Turn Your Back on the Moon. It was written under a full moon, but Martin worried that such an emblem would be too corny. Then he realised that if he was the Go-Betweens’ Grant McLennan, “I would deal with this.” Hence the opener: “Grant McLennan wrote songs about beaches / The moon and kisses / He never made it sound cheesy / Trite or easy.”
The song’s protagonist ponders the fact that McLennan died aged 48, while other friends have died in their 40s. Getting a blood test every year, he decides, is a cheaper midlife crisis “than a racing bike and cycling clothes”.
“We’ve all got kids, so all of a sudden you start thinking about, well, what would happen if I wasn’t around?” Martin says. “Sorry, this is getting quite morbid.”
Not at all. Gen X has reached an age of reckoning: most of us have lost at least one friend by now, or have been dragged back into long-buried sorrows, particularly when our own kids reach certain ages that were significant to us. But there’s hope in this song.
“Well that’s what I try and tell myself, for sure,” Martin says. “I’ve certainly written about shitty things before, but I’d always been a bit more guarded or poetic. This directness was new.”
After decades together, the band has “this shared history, which is not just music, it’s also life,” he says. Thankfully, sticking together has not become old. “For us, touring – particularly in America, where it was just the four of us in a van for months and months – was an incredibly galvanising and bonding experience,” says Martin. “It breaks up a lot of bands, but we had this amazing experience together. And we still have a very good time.”
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Big Whoop is out now (Impressed Recordings/Cassell Records). Youth Group are touring now: playing the Lansdowne Hotel, Sydney on 31 October; Valley Loft, Brisbane on 1 November; Milk Bar, Perth on 7 November and Northcote Social Club, Melbourne on 8 November.
