While celebrating the release of their latest album, indie-rockers Yukon Blonde will stop in Nanaimo during a provincewide tour.
The Vancouver-based group released Shuggie in October and will start a B.C. tour on Thursday, Jan. 25, in Vancouver and end it on Sunday, Jan. 28, at the Queen’s in Nanaimo.
According to a release, Shuggie, the band’s first full-length album since the 2020 LP Vindicator, has been described as a hypnotic and hyper-compelling album that takes Yukon Blonde’s mastery of pop music in its many forms and anchors it in psychedelic synths, wiry guitar licks and bass lines, and a chorus of inviting voices.
“There’s a real openness to this record, both musically and lyrically – sort of wide-reaching exploration of trying to find that something out of all this isolation,” said Jeffrey Innes in the release, on behalf of bandmates Brandon Scott, Graham Jones, and James Younger.
From the buoyant and bouncy indie rock that defined their first half-decade together, culminated in 2012’s Tiger Talk, through their experimentation with emotive ’80s pop on 2015’s On Blonde to the seductive, synth-heavy Critical Hit in 2018, the band’s back catalogue is incredibly diverse, noted the release.
“We’re a pop band, so everything first is rooted in that,” said Innes, “but when you’ve been together as long as we have, and been through as much as we have as friends, you have to find ways to protect yourselves and push forward together.”
Since dropping their debut EP in 2009, the band has earned a Juno nomination, a SOCAN award for the song Saturday Night, and held the No. 1 spot on Earshot – an online platform for the Canadian music industry to be used by radio stations – earning them a cover feature in Earshot Magazine. On the Amazon Prime Video series The Summer I Turned Pretty, the group’s single Summer in July from the Critical Hit album was featured, and garnered the track more than two million streams.
The band’s single Get Precious from 2020 hit the top 10 at Commercial Alternative Radio, while Saturday Night and Love the Way U Are both went No. 1 on the CBC Music Top 20. And in 2022, the band was handpicked by Modest Mouse as direct support on their summer 2022 tour.
On the Island, Yukon Blonde will play in Victoria at the Capital Ballroom on Jan. 26 and at Cumberland’s Waverley Hotel on Jan. 27. Following the Nanaimo show on Jan. 28, the band will play in Whitehorse on Feb. 7.
Tickets for the Queen’s performance can be found online at www.tixr.com.
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