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Last week, Young Galaxy unleashed the first single from their new Dan Lissvik-produced album, Ultramarine. Gorilla vs Bear debuted ‘Pretty Boy’ and called it “a moving, New Order-esque dance-pop anthem that bodes very well for the new record”. The track has already received nearly 60,000 plays. Today, The Quietus has debuted a reworking of ‘Pretty Boy’ by cosmic LA twosome Peaking Lights.

Ultramarine is the name and colour of Young Galaxy’s fourth LP, the first album they have made away from Montreal, across the sea, all together. Like 2011′s Shapeshifting, Ultramarine was made with electronic producer Dan Lissvik (Studio); but this time it was made in Gothenburg, Sweden, at Lissvik’s studio; this time five musicians stood in a room with Lissvik, playing their instruments; this time every song was sung by co-founder Catherine McCandless. Ultramarine will be released by Paper Bag Records on April 23rd.

“In being away from home we felt like we could risk more,” McCandless says. “Take bigger chances. Things we didn’t think would work, we tried anyway.” Whereas Shapeshifting was compartmentalized – songs recorded in Montreal, sent to Lissvik to transmute – Ultramarine came to Gothenburg as a live work, the sum of a performing band’s blood and sweat. Once they arrived in Sweden they reinvented the material, together. But the live performances’ visceral energy stayed at the forefront – these songs aren’t mixing-board creations, they are kinetic, inhabited, and full of breath.

Ultramarine is more direct than previous Young Galaxy records have been, with songs of azure longing, Young Galaxy haven’t lost their other aspect: a willfulness, a purposeful independence, and a sense of darkness, unilluminated. As lighthearted as Ultramarine can be – as much as you can dance to it – there is also something elemental, something underneath.

Young Galaxy
“Pretty Boy”
(Paper Bag Records)
Available digitally February 5, 2013

1. Pretty Boy
2. Pretty Boy (Peaking Lights Remix)

Young Galaxy
Ultramarine
(Paper Bag Records)
Street Date: April 23, 2013

1. Pretty Boy
2. Fall For You
3. New Summer
4. Fever
5. Hard To Tell
6. What We Want
7. Out the Gate Backwards
8. In Fire
9. Privileged Poor
10. Sleepwalk With Me