youth antics interview

introduce yourselves: what genres or sounds do you fall into?

dylan: genres is pretty hard, we would like to say indie/new-wave for sure. especially nowadays, there’s definitely a new wave of indie and a new wave of artists. the whole music industry is changing as we know it, so we like to use the term new wave.

you guys have a sound that reminds me a lot of the cure. what eras or musicians would you say inspired you the most?

dylan: oh thank you! i’ll have derek, our lead singer, answer this one.

derek: i would say, from the beginning, there is this new york rock band from the early 2000’s, they’re called interpol, they’re definitely a very staple band that got us together and inspired us to start learning how to play our instruments. we really got our main inspiration from that band. along with that, a lot of 80’s new wave and pop/dance, like duran duran, INXS…

dylan: did you say depeche mode?

derek: oh, yeah, depeche mode, tears for fears, the list goes on, but when it comes to modern rock bands, i would say interpol, the strokes...

dylan: ...just stuff that really impacted our lives, just really inspired us to pick up a guitar, for sure. derek and i have known each other since..something like 2006, and we learned guitar together. interpol was the whole reason why we picked up a guitar, in fact, i was like a hip-hop dancer, and i didn’t even know music at all in middle school. derek was at my bus stop, and we shared the same bus seat. he happened to show me the band interpol from his ipod and i was just blown away, and ever since then i was just like “what if we do this? what if we pick up guitars?” we’ve been through so many trials and errors and different types of bands, but it wasn’t until the beginning of 2017 that we finally formed youth antics and we finally found the right members, and everything’s been rolling since!

so you got your start in middle school, and then it kind of grew from there?

derek: our drummer, cameron, is my younger brother, and him and dylan started off learning how to play in middle school. i actually started learning in high school. from then on, it was us three that played and started a band together, around 2010. in 2011, we met Pete, who is our rhythm guitarist. we were under a different band name at the time, and then, towards 2014, we split up for about three years. some of our members went off to college, got jobs, other things got in the way.

in 2017 we were like “hey, the four of us want to get back together but we want to do something that would best represent what we we’re visualising for the future. that's what inspired the new band name, and we became youth antics in 2017. we started writing a bunch of new stuff (for YA), we started playing a lot more shows, and this year, we were able to solidify our fanbase in the tampa bay area.

we’ve just been playing shows ever since, and every show has been amazing for us. the music scene in the tampa area is amazing.

you have a song called renee, is there an actual, real life renee?

derek: when i wrote renee, i had never actually met anyone named renee. the reason why i chose the name was because i thought it was a cool name - i had never heard it before -  and it just really fit perfectly in the lyrics i was writing for the song at the time. the thing is, the song renee isn't actually about a renee either, it's a metaphor for something. i’ll just leave the mystery to that right now, you can come up with your own theories. but people think it’s an illusion for somebody that is “renee”.

do you tend to write songs about people and actual experiences that you’ve had, or do you pull inspiration from other people’s experiences and things that may come about?

for the most part, i write off of experiences from other perspectives, i know that a lot of bands, a lot of musicians, a lot of songwriters will writed based off of their own personal things, their own upbringings, things they’ve seen in their own lives. i like to imagine myself as another person trying to sort of relate to what's going on in the world. my actual personal life is, i don’t know, i don’t want to say bland, i live a normal day to day life. i wake up, and i currently have a day job working in an office. obviously all of us in the band have the dream to make this band the thing that’s going to support us for the rest of our lives. but until then, we’re just going to live life the way that we want to, just have fun, go with the flow, and not really worry about things.

dylan: yeah, we put a lot of symbolism into our lyrics, and that makes them really relatable. we have a lot of fans that like to come out to our shows, it’s really fun to interact with them. it’s a different generation of music, with social media there’s just no excuse not to engage with your fans and have fun and make a community with them.

is there anything else you want the readers of soleil to know about?

we’re releasing our third single, which is currently untitled, we’re gearing up for that release for mid-december. this is our first time with this kind of thing (in regards to interviews), so thank you for talking to us!