Youth Group To Reissue & Tour Second Album 'Skeleton Jar'

Mid-'90s-to-late-2000s Sydney-bred alt-rock outfit Youth Group have announced that they'll be reconvening once more following a successful reunion show in January this year, this time for a full tour in honour of an impending vinyl issue of seminal second album Skeleton Jar this June and July.

To many lower-end twentysomethings and below, Youth Group are best known for their career-making (and, consequently, -breaking) cover of Forever Young, but those a little longer in the tooth will be well aware that the band had been prolifically making music together for the better part of a decade before the producers of The OC got their hooks into them, and that the cover with which they would forever be associated didn't actually come along until three albums and several EPs into their time together.

Incidentally, it was Shadowland, the opening track from 2004's second LP Skeleton Jar, that first brought the band to The OC's attention, so it's fitting that the wider album should get another chance to shine, and Youth Group are making the most of it: not only will they be releasing the full-length on vinyl for the first time on 26 June, but they'll kick off that same day for a three-show east-coast tour to play it in full, as well as a "generous selection" drawn from their more-voluminous-than-you'd-expect back catalogue.

The first Skeleton Jar retrospective goes down on Friday, 26 June, at Newtown Social Club, before the band swing Melbourne-ways to play the Northcote Social Club on Friday, 3 July, and head back up the coast to Brisbane to perform at the Black Bear Lodge on Saturday, 4 July.

January's reunion was the first time the band had played together — scratch that, the first time all the band members had even been in the same city together —  since their split in 2009, dropping Skeleton Jar in full at that gig as a tester/taster. Spurred on by the strong response, we now find ourselves staring at the prospect of further Youth Group gigs, and an old release given new life through the vinyl medium. Life is good sometimes.

Tickets for Youth Group's Skeleton Jar east-coast tour are on sale now. See theGuide or check The Music App for more information.