Yukon Blonde w/ special guest Altameda

Why do young people start bands? Because it’s fun. It’s fun to be vocationally audacious when there’s so much future to be had. To sleep on couches and floors. It’s even fun to be broke, for a time. In the pursuit of rock n’ roll, the hardships of obscurity just add flavour to your lore.

I first met Yukon Blonde when they were young, when they moved to Vancouver from a small town in BC’s interior. They had their own van, which was impressive, and into which I helped them load heavy amps and a full sized Rhodes piano. They all had long hair and huge smiles. Frustratingly, even then, they were incredible musicians. They may have been the coolest people I knew. Twenty years later, the same might be true.

When being broke and sleeping on couches is no longer fun, bands break up. And even if money or comfort do enter the picture, success can be just as trying to a band’s tangled web of egos. So it’s no small miracle to be a scene survivor.
Yukon Blonde are indeed scene survivors, and the secret to their successful marriage is right at the core of their 7th studio LP. In fact, it’s right in the title - Friendship & Rock n' Roll. It’s a befitting thesis statement for a band that has spanned decades as indie-rock darlings, charted singles on rock radio, and built a dedicated audience as mainstays of the club touring circuit.

I’ll admit, the title conjures special memories for me, personally. Years after helping them load out behind some crappy (and long deceased) underground venue, I asked Yukon Blonde to play at my wedding. I’ll never forget the moment they started into a cover of Jackie Wilson’s (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher. I excused myself mid-sentence with a distant relative, sprinted to the dance floor, and joined what was without question the most holistically insane dance party I’ve ever attended. That night, they were the very best band in the world - and the rest of us were a sweaty, elated mess.

If friendship comes naturally to Jeffrey Innes, Brandon Scott, Graham Jones & James Younger, so too does rock n’ roll. Yukon Blonde has always sounded classic, but they live in the present day. You won’t see them placating the myth of rock n’ roll. Never have they slipped into a “throwback” caricature of some supposed glory day. No posturing, or pretending - it’s guitar music that doesn’t wink at the camera.

On Friendship & Rock n’ Roll, the riffs are bold and the vibes are bright. Even when the lyrical tone is defeated or heart-broken, we get the sense that everything is going to be alright. There’s whimsy in the subtext of Keep On Breaking My Heart, where Innes welcomes the punishment from his distant lover. The mid-tempo burner harkens to Tom Petty’s golden era in tone and playfulness - a cheeky grin behind the melancholy.

This is a seasoned quartet making music for the joy of it with songs that were cultivated the old-fashioned way: in a jam space. The band spent the summer of 2024 pooling song ideas and crafting air-tight arrangements before getting to work at Innes’ Vancouver area studio, Midvale Sound.

As a result, this is the first Yukon Blonde album with song contributions from every member. Drummer Graham Jones (fresh off a tour subbing for Broken Social Scene’s Justin Peroff) penned Phaedra, a steering wheel tapper with a Rubber Soul-esque break-down. Though Younger and Innes tag team lead vocals throughout the record, lead guitarist Brandon Scott takes the helm on I’ve Got Yours, an earnest ode to the band itself. Scott, who has recently released several stunning EPs under the moniker Brandon Wolfe Scott, sings, “Cuz’ who knows how long this could all last / I still wanna make it / As long as you’ve got my back, I’ve got yours.”

I’ve Got Yours feels like an important sentiment for Yukon Blonde today. After all, over twenty years, the creative wanderings of any band will test its constituents. In recent years, the band’s offerings have grown increasingly electronic, and increasingly centered around the personal studio experimentations of band leader Jeffrey Innes. Both he and bassist James Younger have dedicated increasing energies toward producing other bands and recording soundtracks for TV and film. Innes recently scored Osgood Perkins’ new feature The Monkey (starring Elijah Wood and Theo James), and Younger’s production-related podcast Impossible Way Of Life has found a rapidly growing audience of esteemed indie (and not-so-indie) musicians around the world.

“It all became clear during the tours for Shuggie,” says Innes of the F&RNR’s impetus, “For one reason or another, everything that required a synth or drum machine would break; or our keyboardist was busy. We ended up playing more and more shows just the four of us. It felt really rock and roll. So we just went with it and started rehearsing the set this way, and kinda rethinking about how we wanted to travel and tour. It really started to feel and sound like the music we actually listen to and adore.”

The joy of living in familiar tones with your best friends is crystal clear on the quick and dirty single Adore You, in which Younger summons his inner Joey Ramone. “Tonight we’re gonna play our hearts out… We got more roots than a family tree / And I Adore you”. The verses are about loving rock n’ roll and the choruses are about loving a person and it doesn’t really make much sense except that in the context of the conveyed feeling, it makes perfect sense.

“This is a straightforward, fun record, made by four people in a jam space,” continues Innes, “and the thing is, it was probably the easiest and most fun record we’ve ever had the privilege of making.”

I think the point here is that music can be serious, and the pursuit of building a career in music can involve a great deal of struggle, but music can also be fun. And, if four best buds are going to love each other for as long as Yukon Blonde have, perhaps it must be fun in order to last. Perhaps that’s why this album feels so settled and comfortable. They’re older, wiser, and back in the pocket of the energy that spawned the band in the first place.

Listening to this album, I’m reminded of those sweethearts I met back when we were kids, excited to be paid in beer, playing to twenty people. That special concoction of sludge and sophistication. Two of them may have cut their hair since then, but none have lost their huge smiles. Yukon Blonde has lived the dream of rock n’ roll aspirations, survived the perils and reality of what that actually means, and are still making music together for the right reasons.

On Waiting On A Call, a splendor of chunky riffs and vocal harmonies, Younger laments the required patience of an unrequited situation. “Here I am just waiting on a chance / Like a gambler in a bad romance.” It’s a sentiment every struggling artist can commiserate with, and there may be no greater analogy for pursuing a life in music.

If you’re going to go it alone out there, you may as well have company. I love that twenty years in, Yukon Blonde are still leaning on each other and tapping the well of their bond. And what better glue is there to bond them than Friendship & Rock n’ Roll?
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by Dan Mangan