Young Runner

Formed in 2013, Young Runner have a sound that goes far beyond what people associate with Brooklyn. In fact, they'd probably be at home over the bridge in Manhattan during the roaring '70s punk scene. Blending jagged guitars delivered at breakneck speed, the quartet are definitely a band to watch. We're premiering their latest single "Post-Op" that is a friendly reminder of a time when hard rock and punk rock were things of beauty.

"'Post-Op' is about the struggle our generation faces in entering in to the adult world," they say of the track. "You have debt, you need a job, society places pressure on you to live a certain way, but in your heart you’re saying "this is not what I signed up for."

Young Runner will be releasing new music in the spring. - PureVolume

Wanna listen to about 11 minutes of in-your face grungy rock? Ok, you got it. Stream Young Runner’s debut EP right here as it fully delivers.

Distorted vocals and wicked down-tuned guitars will blast out your eardrums as the heavy-hitting drums are just begging you to bang that old noggin’ of yours. The band itself, hailing from the still semi-cool hood of Bushwick, Brooklyn have penned 4 tracks of good old fashioned rock’n’roll with surprisingly solid lyrics—“I am the end result of a thousand big mistakes.”—I hear ya, buddy.

Lead singer Robert Fleming speaks of love lost, a yearning for something more and confusing emotions playfully hidden within the guise of bad boy rock. Definitely a co-ed type of band as guys will like the thrashing punk guitar jams and gals will enjoy the lyrical sentiments.

I would award this band’s debut an “A” but the truth is, it’s cool enough to forgo a stamp of approval altogether.

Be sure to catch Young Runner at the Cake Shop on 12-19! - Pancakes & Whiskey

If the golden rule of pop is based on a balance of tension and release, then this genre is entirely absent from the repertoire of Brooklyn based power trio Young Runner, which is built upon a foundation of "tension and EVEN MORE tension." You can gather that from single "Wet Cement" (streaming), an unrelenting aural assault vaguely inspired to early grunge and industrial rock, but enriched with anthemic guitar riffs, that from an initial simple bass line alarmingly builds up towards the sonic peak of the chorus, featuring filtered vocals, frantic drums and rivers of distoreted guitars. The band released their self titled debut EP this summer and lately has been regularly playing at noise loving venues like Cake Shop and Don Pedro. - The Deli Magazine

Hailing from Brooklyn, Young Runner is a gritty, fast-paced trio with a sound that is reminiscent of rebellious CBGB days. With an influx of music coming in through multiple outlets, great tunes can get blurred out along the way—but this year, Young Runner hopes to stand out from the pack.
Earlier this year, Young Runner released an EP with packaging that can surmount a mass of joy to anyone who possesses it. (And you should!)
During their show at Cake Shop in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the band took the stage for a rambunctious crowd and cranked out their tight, whaling bass songs.
After their set, we spoke with lead singer Rob Fleming to talk about the Brooklyn music scene, their upcoming music video and what Young Runner is looking forward to accomplishing in 2015.
For your self-titled EP, were those songs formed from jamming or constructed with the intention of releasing an EP?
Long story short, I’ve been writing music for a number of years and we got this group together I guess about a year ago.
And did you all meet in Brooklyn through mutual friends or you had already known each other?
I went to school with Pat, our drummer, and I actually went to high school with him. Chris our bass player, I went to college with him. I lived with Chris for a while, and we would jam and work on music, then [we] got together with Pat and we were making music. The three of us got together a year ago and we started working on songs that I had been writing and developing what it is that we sound like now.
When did you decide to make that a full time thing?
We had some demos that we recorded in March of last year, and we were using them to get gigs and stuff. We just felt like if we wanted to start playing more legitimate shows and get some more attention—we decided to do a proper recording. We took four songs that we thought were representative of our sound, and we went to a studio and did the thing.
Will you be releasing a full-length at all?
Yea, I think the goal for 2015 is definitely to record either a full-length or a longer EP. In April, we’ll probably be hitting the road for like a short stint hitting a couple of cities, doing an east coast thing. And try to get our music in front of other people besides people in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side.
Besides music, do you have a background in anything else?
Well, we all have day jobs. I studied Art and Design, and I freelanced as a Design Art Director to kind of pay my bills. We all have day jobs, and we obviously are trying to not have to work day jobs—that would be great. Chris studied writing and he’s a great writer. A lot of the visual representation of our band, I put a lot of work into that but that’s definitely a whole aspect—like the EP, I designed all that stuff.
Yea, I noticed that whole packaging is really nice!
Thank you! Yea, I think that that stuff is really important because the more care you put into things… I hope people connect with it that much more. Something a little more tangible that they can check out.
You have a music video coming out soon? Can you tell us anything about that?
A good friend of ours who does a lot of producing and editing, he’s been to a lot of our shows, just has a ton of footage. We went to a studio and we shot some cool stuff, so we’re going to put together like a mini video that’s a compilation of live footage and us in the studio.
Going back to this whole Brooklyn/LES sort of scene and groups of people there, do you find yourself going to certain band’s shows or hanging out more?
Yea, it’s funny I was just talking to Pat about this. Within North Brooklyn, like Williamsburg and Bushwick, there’s a bunch of other music around here but in general a majority of what people are listening to is coming from here. There’s all these different cliques and different groups, and we’ve played with a lot of different bands but we don’t really subscribe to any certain one. Music doesn’t really sound like one thing or the other. We played at Palisades in Bushwick a couple of weeks ago with this band BOYTOY who we really like and they’re awesome. That was super fun because it’s cool to play with a band you listen to and actually enjoy.
If you could play a show with any deceased famous musician who would you pick?
Oh, wow that’s a good one. I’d love to play with Joe Strummer. We all listen to really drastically different things but we do have a lot of bands who we all like.
Who are some of those bands?
So Pat our drummer comes from a jazz and funk background, which really influences a lot of the way that he plays. He has a smooth drumming style that has a lot of swing to it. We really bond on a lot of that stuff. He likes anything from Herbie Hancock to…there’s a lot of bands we like together. Then Chris is obsessed with the Pixies, and the two of us like to work on bass lines and guitar parts that have that sort of style. We’re kind of like a mixed bag of all these different things.
So other than this kind of rock genre, would you take some of those other influences and infuse them into future works? Would you be open to experimenting with other sounds?
I think definitely when we put out a ten song full-length or something, it’ll hopefully be a crystallization of what we sound like now, which is very stripped down, very intense fast-paced New York style rock n’ roll. But I write all sorts of stuff that doesn’t make it into the band. I write music that’s really slow and moody, and then I write stuff that’s really weird and has a world music influence and stuff. Just for the time being, we are trying to hone in on one thing. Sometimes we jam on stuff that sounds totally crazy, but we put it on the back burner or for a rainy day.
“Untitled (Man Eater)” was a standout track for me off the EP so can you tell me a little bit about that?
For the longest time we were working on our set and writing all these songs, and when we got to that song, we just never had a title for it. I thought it was kind of funny to be like well we don’t have a title for it, but technically you get the gist of it when you hear Man Eater.
I feel like you know Arcade Fire when they put out The Suburbs, they had that really great modern man idea. In the 21st century, you get a lot of mixed messages culturally and socially like be chivalrous but also you shouldn’t be chivalrous. It’s just a lot of mixed messages and if you’re a Type B person and a laid back person, being in a romantic relationship with somebody that is not Type B and that dynamic and that struggle.
Especially with being in New York and being in Brooklyn, everyone is like…people use the word feminism a lot. People can get confused on what that is. It’s tough because on paper I want to be as much of a feminist as I can be, and I like to think that I am but at the same time, I’m a guy and it’s just kind of complicated sometimes. [In] relationships, you want to be this progressive person but you were raised to treat women a certain way and navigate those waters.
What’re you looking forward to accomplishing in the New Year?
I think collectively, Young Runner as a band, we are writing a lot of new music. We feel like we’ve made a lot of traction this past year, and [we’d like to] try to play a lot more shows and play with bands that we like and maybe some bigger bands and do some bigger shows. Festival time is going to be coming up in the spring and summer, and we won’t go to SXSW or anything like that but even within New York, there are a lot of great festivals. Even in Bushwick there’s a lot of these sort of DIY festivals over the summer. We’re sort of starting the conversation of doing some really great stuff in the upcoming year and hopefully we will have some touring under our belt, then a full-length and a video, so there’s a lot of things happening. There’s so much music out there, and there are so many outlets so we’re just trying to get it in front of as many people as we can.
Check out Young Runner’s EP below! - Secret Sound Shop