By Brian Mansfield, Special for USA TODAY
These rockers are climbing the charts with the energetic alt-rock anthem 'My Body.'
By Pieter M. van Hattem
They're getting big: Eric Cannata, left, Francois Comtois, Sameer Gadhia, Jacob Tilley, and Payam Doostzadeh of Young the Giant.
By Pieter M. van Hattem
They're getting big: Eric Cannata, left, Francois Comtois, Sameer Gadhia, Jacob Tilley, and Payam Doostzadeh of Young the Giant.
Giant steps:�With its fist-pumping beat and shout-along refrain of "My body tells me no, but I won't quit 'cause I want more," energetic alt-rock anthem My Bodyis shaping up as one of spring's best tension relievers. And that's exactly what Young the Giant had in mind while writing it, says singer Sameer Gadhia. The song, which peaked at No. 4 on USA TODAY's alternative airplay chart, came at the end of a frustration-filled day for the young California-based group. "Why don't we just jam something out, like the most ridiculous thing you could imagine?" Gadhia remembers the discussion going. "It doesn't even have to make sense. Just yell it out, because it means you're releasing your tension." Ten minutes later, he says, "the entire song had been created."
California, here they come:�Bassist Payam Doostzadeh, 21, is the only native Californian in the bunch. The rest come from such far-flung locales as Canada (drummer Fran�ois Comtois, 22), England (guitarist Jacob Tilley, 21), New Jersey (guitarist Eric Cannata, 20) and Michigan (Gadhia, 21). They met as teens in California and formed their band as a more-melodic reaction against the local music scene. "There were a lot of hardcore bands," Comtois says. "Because there was so little to do, you ended up seeing a lot of those shows. After a while, it was kind of tedious hearing the same thing over and over."
More than Jakes:�Formed in 2004, the group was initially known as The Jakes, an acronym for the original members' first initials. When the lineup changed, so did the name. "It didn't really make much literal sense," Gadhia says. "But there was something adventurous about it, something imaginative. It captured the idea of where we were at the time in our songwriting process. It became the inspiration for all these songs that make up the album."
The big break:�The group won a contest on music-marketing website Sonicbirds to open for Kings of Leon at a January 2009 concert at Chicago's House of Blues. "That's when things really started picking up," Gadhia says. That show piqued label interest, and the group played music showcase South by Southwest a couple months later. Young the Giant songs appeared on MTV's The Real World: Brooklyn and A&E's The Beast. The band ended up signing with Roadrunner Records, which released its self-titled debut digitally in the fall and physically this January (22,000 copies sold to date).
'My Body' and everybody else's:�The group will head to Europe in May and appear at Lollapalooza in August. But it wasn't that long ago that the bandmates were playing college parties like Stanford's annual Exotic Erotic where, Gadhia recalls, the entire audience was wearing lingerie and underwear. "Everyone decided to come up on stage during the last song," he says. "People started spilling beer and alcohol on all the electrical equipment. By the end, everything shut off, but we were still playing and everyone was singing along."
Meeting a Beatle:�During a studio showcase for a record label in Los Angeles, members of the group spotted several equipment cases stamped "McCARTNEY." "We were confused: Is this Jesse McCartney? Paul?" Gadhia says. "Then the guitarist runs in saying, 'Paul McCartney is outside eating lunch.' So we went and told him that we had been listening to him since we were little, and he was like, 'Good to know that you guys have good taste in music.' He was very witty."
'Body' works:�For Comtois, one of the best things about My Body's success is that it puts bodies at the shows. "We'll show up in a place like Jacksonville, where we've never played before, and the room is completely packed," he says. "Granted, it's not a huge room just yet, but it's really exciting to walk on stage and have people who already know the words, who are invested in what you're doing. It's a nice surprise every time."
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