Young The Giant have shared “Amerika” from their upcoming album Home Of The Strange which will be out August 12th through Fueled by Ramen/Atlantic Records. This is splendid news for YTG superfans across the globe, yours truly included. I may or may not have squealed out loud. Don’t judge.
The wildly adventurous Home Of The Strange, the band’s third, was produced by Alex Salibian (Elle King, Mikky Ekko) with 2016 Grammy winner for Producer of the Year Jeff Bhasker serving as the album’s Executive Producer. The song “Amerika” was inspired by Franz Kafka’s posthumously published and unfinished novel of the same name. The members of the Los Angeles quintet are all the sons of immigrants, with a majority of the band being first or zero generation Americans. They can relate to Kafka’s story of Karl, a sixteen year old who flees Germany under uncertain circumstances. He becomes a stowaway on a ship headed to NY and the book tells the tale of a bizarre coming of age story of a boy caught between the cultures of two worlds, struggling to belong.
The band says of the song, “We find ourselves searching for our own ethics in between the often-contradictory beliefs of this polarized American Modern Age and those of the romanticized cultures of our forefathers. Our perspective is irreversibly tinged with this rhetoric of the immigrant conscience and guilt. ‘Amerika’ explores the contradictions of our psyche and America at large. Searching for the American Dream is to lust for excess, power, sex. There is wonderment. There is disappointment. On this rollercoaster ride, we realize that when we achieve our goals, they often leave us more hollow than before. Behind it all, we just want to feel at home, to belong, and to be loved.”
Snag a listen to “Amerika”:
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