Shapeshifting is the third studio album by Young Galaxy

Young Galaxy

-External links:**...

, released on Paper Bag Records

Paper Bag Records

Paper Bag Records is a Canadian independent record label and artist-management company, founded in 2002 and based in Toronto, Ontario.-History:...

 in February 2011. It was produced by Dan Lissvik

Dan Lissvik

Dan Lissvik , born in 1978, is a Swedish musician and producer. Together with Rasmus Hägg he founded the award-winning group Studio...

 of the Swedish duo Studio

Studio (band)

Studio is a Swedish electronic music band. They have been described as the missing link between The Cure and Lindstrøm - while simultaneously touching upon Can, Neu, Happy Mondays and The Smiths - in their creation of a "afrobeat-dub-disco-indie-pop" adventure...

. Reviewed in Pitchfork

Pitchfork Media

Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...

, Andrew Gaerig called it the band's "finest record".

The album was named as a longlisted nominee for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize

2011 Polaris Music Prize

The 2011 edition of the Canadian Polaris Music Prize was presented on September 19, 2011. The winner was Arcade Fire, for the album The Suburbs.For the 2011 award, the prize was increased to $30,000 for the winning musician.-Shortlist:...

.

Production

The album was recorded by the three-piece in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, then sent to Gothenburg

Gothenburg

Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, where Lissvik reworked the material. The band and producer collaborated using Skype

Skype

Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chat over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system...

 to communicate over the nine-month duration. The group's method to composing the songs was described by songwriter/singer/guitarist Stephen Ramsay as "[i]nstead of picking up a guitar and finding the most brilliant melody we could, we tried to erase the shape of the songs." The band moved away from traditional verse-chorus structures towards a more "impressionistic

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

" approach. Songs were written by Ramsay and McCandless, with Stephen Kamp playing bass.

Style

The album is described as a departure from their previous recording, Invisible Republic

Invisible Republic (album)

Invisible Republic is the second album by the Canadian indie rock band Young Galaxy, released August 25, 2009 on Fontana North.The album is a longlisted nominee for the 2010 Polaris Music Prize.-Track listing:...

. Lissvik's more electronic-oriented roots resulted in "dance-inflected pop", as opposed to their more dream pop

Dream pop

Dream pop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s, when bands like The Passions, Dif Juz, Lowlife and A.R. Kane began fusing post-punk and ethereal experiments with bittersweet pop melodies into dreamy, sensual soundscapes. The term was almost...

 style on earlier records. Although Ramsay and McCandless share vocal duties on the recording, Shapeshifting sees singer/keyboardist Catherine McCandless moving into more of a "lead-singer role".

Video

An animated video for the song "We Have Everything" was released in February, 2011. It was produced by Montreal-based animator Sinbad Richardson.

Tracklist

1. "Nth"
2. "The Angels Are Surely Weeping"
3. "Blown Minded"
4. "We Have Everything"
5. "For Dear Life"
6. "Peripheral Visionaries"
7. "High and Goodbye"
8. "Phantoms"
9. "Cover Your Tracks"
10. "B.S.E."
11. "Shapeshifting"

Formats

Released on compact disc

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

 and in MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 format, the LP was also released in a limited-run, 180-gram white vinyl edition.