On August 9th, Canadian synthpop duo Electric Youth will be making their long awaited return with their new album Memory Emotion. We were beyond elated when they re-emerged a few months ago with glimmering The Life, so it’s near impossible to put into words how we’re feeling now that they’ve unleashed Memory Emotion’s next single, ARAWA. Vocalist Bronwyn Griffin and multi-instrumentalist Austin Garrick brings us a sparkling cascade of their trademark dreamy swirling, pastel glowing synthpop on ARAWA. Garrick explains: “We titled the song ARAWA as an acronym for As Restless As We Are. As we looked further, we discovered that Arawa is also many other things: a town in Papua New Guinea that was destroyed in war that there are plans to rebuild; an extinct Brazilian language; the name of a canoe that brought Polynesian migrants across the ocean to New Zealand... We wrote the song after seeing the devastation of the California wildfires while driving through Malibu. All these meanings for the word Arawa echoed the themes we were already addressing in the song: the notion that every generation fears they're the last vs. the ability to survive, and the destruction of nature vs. its resilience. Jason Zada's video somehow encapsulates this same duality found in the music vs. the lyrics. The physical beauty of the Hawaiian landscape mirrors the sound of the music, while the tone of the characters echoes the sentiments of the lyrics that tell another side of the story, revealed at the end of the video.”
Electric Youth will play an album release show on August 17th at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg. More tour dates will be announced soon. Let’s hope they’ll include a show in San Francisco. Stream/download ARAWA, here.
