It’s midnight last Saturday and I’m at a friend’s place playing board games when my phone vibrates. At first I don’t give it a second though, between all the useless emails and unimportant Slack messages I get on a daily bases it’s probably something that could wait a few minutes, besides it’s Saturday night. Eventually, In-between rounds I take a casual look at my phone and my mind begins to race. The free tickets for this month were posted and I am late to the party. Most everything has been claimed, but Luckily there was still a ticket left to one of the biggest concerts this month, Young the Giant and through what must have been some form of divine intervention I was able to snag a ticket.

I’m not a big Young the Giant fan and definitely couldn’t name many of their songs outside their hits. However, for me, as with a lot of people my age, Young the Giant helped to create our sound. Young the Giant’s single My Body came out when I was just entering High School and it was like nothing I had ever heard. The spacey guitar, grooving rhythm, and introspective vocals about the soul were so different from everything else at the time. It was a part of the first wave of 2010s indie bands to hit the mainstream. With their hit singles Bands like FUN., Foster the People, and Young the Giant opened the doors to a new sound that has come to reflect a huge segment of this generation. Late night car rides, laughter, heartbreak, and everything happened as their songs played in the background, because of that any of them are worth seeing when they come to town.

At a time where mainstream music was ruled by pop artist like Ke$ha, Rihanna, and 3OH!3 Bands like Young the Giant offered to the masses a completely different sound. Which in a time where most of us still either payed for music or listened to it on the radio was a big deal. Growing up, it seemed like mainstream music had a lot to do with partying and sex. But Young the Giant and their single my Body did something different, something with meat. Their music had slow points, soft points, loud points, and fast points it was dynamic. The lyrics went beyond the crust, diving into intense introspection by conveying layers of emotion. Songs like My Body and Cough Syrup gave the listener more to think about than a song like Ke$ha’s Tic Toc or Like a G6 by Free Wired. They were personal, touching on real life problems and showed that band the created them was not just a group of bad asses but rather just people.

I hear the complaint that all indie music sounds the same few a lot. That they all start with a synthesizer, have similar lyrics, or the same composition and on occasion I even agree. However, the farther we get from that day in 2010 when I first bought Foster the People’s Pumped Up Kicks the more grateful I am that I did. For all of its quirks, condescension, and pomp indie gave me something that I didn’t look for 7 years ago, depth. That’s why I rushed to grab tickets to see Young the Giant this weekend, it gives me a chance to reflect on that and also some amazing musicians live. See you there.

You can grab tickets to Young the Giant here: http://www.thecomplexslc.com/event-1258.htm