If the name Young Rising Sons rings a bell to you, it’s likely due to the success of their 2014 debut single “High.” The New Jersey indie poppers have endured a lot since the folksy tune went viral — including a brief, forced hiatus — but the trio are ready to stake their claim with their evocative new single “NOISE” today (May 4). While the song feels rather uplifting, it actually resulted from a trying time for Young Rising Sons.
“We wrote that song the day we split from our old label,” frontman Andy Tongren tells Billboard.
“NOISE” came about as a means of coping with the negativity the band faced by being involved with their old label, but simultaneously embracing the opportunity to turn over a new leaf looking forward.
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“It’s important to not be naive and be aware of those things, but it’s also important to take the good things and appreciate them and focus on those,” Tongren explains.
With the departure of the label came the arrival of a new sound for Young Rising Sons. While their breakout with “High” is brimming with lighthearted whimsy, “NOISE” unveils a darker, moodier side for the band, heavily influenced by electronic elements like synths, dazzling sound effects and a dash of vocal distortion. Despite the stark change in genre direction, “NOISE” still embodies the recognizable Young Rising Songs quality.
“In a band, I think it’s only natural that you mature and evolve and create something skewed a little from where you initially began,” Tongren recalls. “The moment in our lives when we wrote ‘High,’ we were very different people and I think we have through the past couple of years changed a lot, and our musical taste has changed a little bit. While we appreciate ‘High,’ I think we’ve grown…We wanted to be real and be honest with ourselves.”
The realness and honestly permeates through the lyrics, in which Tongren repeatedly insists “don’t listen to all of the noise” during the explosive chorus. However, the “noise” he mentions is entirely subjective.
“I think everybody has their noise,” Tongren says. “It’s that thing that really bogs them down and makes you feel a little insignificant. Whether it’s somebody talking badly about you, or turning on the television and watching news, and seeing all the things that are happening in the world that are scary and terrifying to us all…It’s easy to think to yourself, ‘What’s the point of any of this?’ In that whole realm of thought, you need to find your happiness.”
It’s safe to say Young Rising Sons have found a great deal of happiness with their return, having re-emerged from a phase where putting out new music wasn’t possible. Tongren describes the comeback as feeling like a “rebirth,” and he hopes sonically, listeners will be able to understand the band’s journey.
“[The hiatus] was a little bit forced,” Tongren says. “But I do believe that time was important for us to take. I think we were able to experiment with new things, and a lot of what we experimented with was terrible and it didn’t work. We kinda learned as we went what fit us, what was Young Rising Sons, and what was not Young Rising Sons. I think that time did benefit us in the long run.”
With a long-awaited EP in the works, Young Rising Sons will also be hitting the road in support of Magic Giant this month. Listen to “NOISE” below.