Attention fans of swoon-inducing West Coast melodic rock: it’s time to meet your new favourite band. Well, maybe ‘new’ isn’t quite the word, but after five self-released albums, the reputation of Young Gun Silver Fox – that’s English singer/guitarist Andy Platts and US-born London-based multi-musician and producer Shawn Lee – is finally gaining some traction.
“There’s no hype about us. We’re about music, not marketing,” explains Shawn Lee, the titular Silver Fox. “We’re building organically and we want to win hearts and minds the old-fashioned way – by word of mouth. Fans that discover us like that are more committed than the casual ones.”
More fresh-faced and less hirsute than his partner, Platts (AKA the Young Gun) reveals that in previous guises, both were “eaten up and spat out by the machine of the music business”. But despite their softly-softy approach, Young Gun Silver Fox now attract up to a thousand fans in the UK, plus “double or triple that in Holland” where the band are really taking off. In the United States, “five or six hundred” people will pay to see them in a club. Since meeting up a decade ago, the pair have since supplied material for a host of other artists – including Take That – bonding over the process of composition.
“Both of us revere songcraft, the workmanship of making records,” Platts enthuses. “The 1970s were the absolute pinnacle of that. Somewhere along the way I think it became a little lost.”
The just-released Pleasure is the first record made with the pair together in the same room.
“Our previous albums were consistent,” theorises Lee, “but working this way was empowering. Side one of the record was written in a couple of days and we hit our best shit right from the get-go. We knocked it right out of the park.”
The pair have it on good authority that their music was played regularly on the ELO tour bus, while iconic German film composer Hans Zimmer is also a bit of a fan. Comparisons to Steely Dan are, of course, the ultimate compliment.
YGSF don’t go out of their way to court so-called ‘yacht rock’- derived publicity – their biography prefers to describe their sound as “classic melodic pop with a funk ’n’ soul twist, drenched in sunshine”. Still, naturally, the benefits of being pigeonholed can be convenient.
“I’m no Daryl Hall,” chuckles Lee, referencing the former Hall & Oates singer who famously detests the term. “We mess about with the imagery of palm trees and we wear Hawaiian shirts but there’s no parody in what we do, so we must be cautious. Those things are tongue-in-cheek, but despite having a sense of humour we are very serious about our music.”
Pleasure is available now. Young Gun Silver Fox's European tour kicks off in September, with an October date in London followed by US shows. For dates and tickets, check the band's website.
