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There's no question that most bands spend a good portion of the year on the road, crammed in sweaty vans, rolling from city to city in the dark of night. Young the Giant is one of those nomadic bands. Its newest music video (above), for "Cough Syrup," premieres Monday.
On The Road
Although Young the Giant has been touring almost constantly for two years, the band hasn't slowed down when it comes to creating content. The band members teamed up with childhood friend and photographer Alexander Shahmiri while on tour last May to undertake a new project, creating simple, lovely acoustic videos for a good portion of their album.
"During one of the drives out of Utah we were passing by the salt flats and I asked if we could stop to do a shoot," says Shahmiri. "We filmed their song 'I Got' out there, and that was the start of In the Open."
In the Open is a video series featuring bands performing acoustically in outdoor spaces — shot usually in one take. "The idea behind the In the Open videos is to show musicians and bands in a different type of light, and to show a bit of the band's personality in a more discrete way than interview," Shahmiri says.
"We've been on the road for such a long time, it made sense," says Francois Comtois, the band's drummer. "A lot of it ended up being pretty impromptu."
The videos, like the one above, are stark and full of natural beauty — bereft of all the polish inherent in official music vids, allowing viewers to focus more on the music than the spectacle.
"The videos are a lot more intimate than if you were to go watch the band perform in an arena or even a bigger venue, and I want people to be able to connect and feel like they are actually there when watching the videos," Shahmiri says.
The video above is for the song "Cough Syrup" off of the band's self-titled album [iTunes link], and was filmed in San Francisco by the Golden Gate Bridge.
Young the Giant's 6 Essential Apps for Bands on Tour
Still, the occasional video — or seven — is not enough to occupy one's mind when one is far from home. (All of the guys, who are 21 years old or almost 21, live at home with their parents — when they are, in fact, home.)
Being Mashable, we asked the band members to tell us what apps they find essential to maintaining on-tour sanity.
1). Instagram [iTunes link]: Frankly, we're surprised that more bands aren't actively using this photo-sharing service. The National is probably the most notable band on Instagram, with around 15,000 followers, but few bands actually have a branded presence.
All the members of Young the Giant use Instagram individually, and it functions as a kind of tour diary. "Fans want more and more stuff," says guitarist Jacob Tilley, with regard to Twitter and the like.
"We're in a van all day. What do they want us to say?" adds Comtois.
Instagram, however, allows the guys to give their fans image-based content, as well as remember where they're been.
2). WhatsApp? [iTunes link]: Beloved by Jacob Tilley — who is originally from the UK — this cross-platform messenger uses push notifications to send and receive messages to other users. That way, Tilley can chat with family overseas without any SMS charges. (Available for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones.)
3). Master Tour: Guitarist Eric Cannata suggests that fellow musicians check out tour management tool and mobile app [iTunes link] Master Tour if they want to stay on track while on the road. "It gets you out of pickle," Tilley interjects.
4). OldBooth [iTunes link]: Lead singer Sameer Gadhia adds some levity to the mix by suggesting OldBooth, an app that lets you manipulate any picture to make it look like it comes from another era. Check out the snap of bass player Payam Doostzadeh that he old-ified below.
5). Sleep Cycle [iTunes link]: Payam Doostzadeh's app of choice is an alarm clock app that analyzes your sleep cycle and wakes you up when you're in the "lightest sleep phase." Doostzadeh says it works…
6). Epicurious [iTunes link]: Comtois says that when the guys are home, they like to have dinners and BBQs together (surprisingly — one would think they would be sick of each other). The Epicurious app provides them with a ton of recipes for communal cooking.
Road image courtesy of Flickr, Daniel D'Auria
More About: epicurious, Master Tour, mobile apps, music, music monday, OldBooth, Sleep Cycle, video, WhatsApp?, young-the-giant
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