It can be hard balancing the life of a full-time artist and a full-time life outside of music. For most bands, members take on a job—or multiple jobs—during downtime to earn money for tours, to invest in the band, and to be able to grow organically until they hit that big break.
Tyler Zanon, the mastermind behind Canada’s Youth Fountain, has been doing this the entire time he has been making music. He has worked as part of a duo and as a solo artist, and still finds himself loving every second of it. Zanon is now ready to put out a new album, marking a fresh, new era for Youth Fountain.
“I’ve always loved to just do music and record on my own, and just write songs, and [they] seem to resonate with some people,” shares Zanon. “I’ll give it a try. I’ll put out some more songs and see how she goes. I love to do it, and it makes me happy. It’s like some emotional outlet for me for sure, and at the end of the day, I just do it because I have to, and that’s the bottom line.”
The new album, Keepsakes & Reminders, released November 5 via Pure Noise Records, and is the highly anticipated follow up to Youth Fountain’s breakout album, Letters to Our Former Selves. In 2020, vocalist Cody Muraro left the band, and ended up resurfacing as the new vocalist for Real Friends. A new era for Youth Fountain came when Zanon put out the Letters to Our Former Selves acoustic EP, showing he can still get things done, like he has his entire music career.
Keepsakes & Reminders shows off that growth, and a slightly different sound, but still has all of the high energy pop punk renditions that Youth Fountain is known and loved for. And the songs are not only loved for their music, but the lyrics and meanings behind them resonate with listeners as well.
“[My lyrics are about] what I’m kind of going through, in terms of how I’m feeling emotionally,” says Zanon. “A lot of my lyrics are very blunt and personally driven from life experiences and things that I go through in my mind. I’ve always stuck with the whole emo-pop-punk thing, just because I feel like it’s always been my main go to, the kind of music I listened to. It’s what makes me feel something.”
Zanon took a very different approach to recording this record versus Letters. Instead of recording on his laptop, then engineering and mastering everything himself, he worked with Tim Creviston (Spirit Box, Misery Signals, Chief State) in the studio. Some of the songs had been tucked away in the vault since 2017, and some riffs from 2014 made it into the final cut. It’s been a long time coming for Zanon to truly break out, and Keepsakes & Reminders is just the recipe to make that happen.
“I have so many other things going on in life, on top of work and everything,” explains Zanon. “It can be a little bit to juggle everything going on, but it’s something I love to do. No matter the hard work that it takes, I like to do it, and I think I think that’s what shows in the music. I’m a firm believer in working hard and doing what you love. Even if it is just kind of on my own, I’m still going.”
Check out the music video for “My Mental Health/Century” here:
For more from Youth Fountain, find them on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Photo courtesy of Youth Fountain and Brandynn Leigh
