Sameer (second from right) with his band Young the Giant

Why should Young the Giant be taken seriously? The boys from California have Cough Syrup (Darren Criss covered the song in a season three episode of Glee; the original song peaked at number three on the US Alternative Songs chart in 2011) to their credit. They are signed to Roadrunner Records, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group. They have impressed Morrissey of the legendary rock band The Smiths.

And if that’s not enough, the group has a Bong connection. Young the Giant — with Jacob Tilley (guitar), Eric Cannata (guitar, vocals), Payam Doostzadeh (bass guitar) and Francois Comtois (drums, percussion, vocals) — is led by Sameer Gadhia (lead vocals, percussion, occasional acoustic guitar), who is half-Gujarati and half-Bengali! An email chat with Sameer...

Do you still have family members living in India and do you often travel to India and Calcutta?

I am half-Gujarati and half-Bengali (father Tushar Gadhia and mother Sharmila Bhaduri). My parents were high-school sweethearts from St. Xavier’s in Ahmedabad, and have been together ever since. I have a Mama in Mumbai, and both my cousins were raised there. Both my grandmothers from either side reside in Ahmedabad, and I have more distant relatives in both Gujarat and Bengal. I have been to India every two years since I was a young boy. Just last year I attended my cousin’s wedding in Mumbai. I do still have many relations residing in Calcutta and I visit every few years.

It’s been two years since your self-titled debut album. What kind of music have you been listening to between albums?

Thanks to two-and-a-half years of the festival circuit, abroad and at home, we now have a pulse of music within; we have learnt the tricks of the trade from generations before us. Kraut-rockers (rock and electronic influenced music) Can (legendary band from Germany) as well as David Bowie have heavily influenced our consciousness. Among the contemporaries are Tame Impala, Little Dragon, Here We Go Magic and D’Angelo, to name a few.

You recently announced that Justin Meldal-Johnsen (best known for his work with Nine Inch Nails) is going to produce your next album. How will he make a difference to your sound?

Funnily enough, I am sitting with him in the studio as I am typing this, and amid a few witticisms, Justin has said he wants to amplify our sound; create an album that is not quite plainly derivative of this or any previous time; something “un-dateable”. In our opinion, Justin has fostered our spontaneous and rash sides of creation. He has taught us that the greatest records have a little dirt around the edges.

You grew up listening (not necessarily practising) to Indian classical music. Has that in any way shaped your choice in music?

My (lack of) understanding of Indian classical music has made the music of our culture all the more mystifying to me, and is sort of my muse in the creative process. Indian classical traverses at times very far from Western theory and melodic congruence, and has irreverently and joyfully broken my vase of understanding, allowing me to pick up and recreate it my own way.

Do you still listen to music from India? What do you think of it?

All the women in my family are still quite up to date with the Bollywood scene, and my understanding of mainstream music until recently did not expand very far past “filmy” music. Thanks to YouTube, however, and my realisation of Mumbai’s Blue Frog, I have been trying to catch up.

There is a thriving indie music scene in India. What’s your take on it?

It is very understandable that such a diverse, distraught, and beautiful country creates great indie music. It has all the important elements –– novel and emotional subject matter, and swift revolutionary change in the economic, political and social spheres, creating further rifts within the society itself. I have become very fascinated with the scene recently. My lament (and secret fawning) stems from the fact that the Indian scene is, as a whole, completely unrecognised by the international community. In the future, I would love to invest time, energy, and capital in solidifying the underground scene. There must be more attention paid to venues, sound equipment, engineers, and producers. As I briefly talked about earlier, Blue Frog has become a portal for me for new indie music. A band called Sky Rabbit (formerly Medusa) has caught my ears of late.

You have a friendship with Morrissey and have performed at the MTV Video Music Awards. How has fame changed the band and its members?

I am happy to say that our tight familial support has grounded all of us as individuals and a group. We are more conscious of the effect of our music, and have been surprised and flattered by champions such as Morrissey, but we haven’t changed much as individuals. I completely credit my parents for raising me like a good Indian boy.

Your band was originally called The Jakes. What prompted the name change?

The beginning of The Jakes contained a different incarnation of what became the Shake My Hand Jakes (the EP that featured Cough Syrup). We had come a long way since our schoolboy jams, and decided to rename ourselves under the new moniker. It is hard to tell how the name change has shaped our career, although we often joke about an alternate universe as The Jakes playing dive bars (neighbourhood bars) on endless repeat, or something beyond of what we are doing now.

Finally, what are you listening to at present?

Presently, I am listening to Melbourne-based band Hiatus Kaiyote. Stunning vocals.

Mathures Paul

Does Young the Giant do your kind of music? Tell t2@abp.in