When Hamilton’s Young Rival went and changed its name from the Ride Theory, the band didn’t re-invent itself, per se.  

 

The quartet is still happy to deliver music that throbs with English Invasion-isms. The guys are still keen to devote all of their spare time to the one thing that keeps them happy.

 

The new name does, however, inject the band with  renewed purpose.  

 

“Since we changed the name, I’ve taken a lot more time and put a lot more effort into writing lyrics that are meaningful to myself, and therefore more likely to be meaningful to other people,” lead guitarist and singer Aron D’Alesio says. “As we’re getting a little older now, it does become more serious. We kind of went through a bit of a, ‘Oh my god, we’re growing up. We gotta get jobs and live and handle stuff.’ We are growing up, but we’re trying to figure out how to incorporate the most important thing to us into our lives while still growing up.”

 

Part of that task included heading down to New York late last year to record with Emery Dobyns (who won a 2008 Grammy for his work on Suzanne Vega’s Beauty & Crime), the result of which is the band’s recently released self-titled EP.

 

Although the band—made up of D’Alesio, drummer Noah Fralick, guitarist Kyle Kuchmey and bassist John Smith—laid down enough tracks to put together an album, the guys opted  to keep some of the work under their hats ... for now.

 

“We wanted to make more of a cohesive artistic statement with what we were putting out, rather than a bunch of stuff that we thought might not completely fit onto an album,” D’Alesio explains. “And with this, too, we’re kind of leaving the door open for other people to jump on—like, labels and stuff like that—if they wanted to come along and put the full-length out. But ultimately it was more of a decision to put out our favourite stuff from those sessions.”

 

Young Rival isn’t going to just sit around waiting for that elusive record deal to happen, though. After a coast-to-coast tour (the young men came west with the Sadies last year), the band is going to head back into the studio to finish off another record its been working on in Ontario. One of the tracks, a cover of Beach House’s “Master of None,” already garnered a positive Pitchfork review. 

 

Young Rival’s brand of ‘60s garage-influenced rock doesn’t seriously break any moulds, but it does beautifully evoke those good times when parents shook their heads at hair so long it brushed the collar, and the guys have fun doing it. V