Showtime

What: Young Rival, CD release

When: Friday, Sept. 19, 10 p.m.

Where: Casbah, 306 King St. W.

Cost: $5 at the door

Info: myspace.com/youngrival

Young Rival takes pride in its live act. It's the kind of sweaty young band that combines sweet four-part Mersey style harmonies with jangly guitar patterns and paint-pealing solos. The four members of this Hamilton band came from the garage and they're proud of it.

So when they went shopping for a producer for their debut CD, they wanted someone who would be true to that onstage sound. They found him in New York City in the form of Emery Dobyns, a Grammy winning soundman whose credits include Patti Smith and Suzanne Vega.

"We wanted to capture that live sound in the studio and he was totally in line with our philosophy," says Young Rival drummer Noah Fralick.

In November, Fralick, Aron D'Alesio (guitar, vocals), Kyle Kuchmey, (guitar, vocals) and John Smith (bass, vocals), packed up their 1999 Caravan and headed south, taking a cheap hotel room in New Jersey, just 20 minutes away from downtown Manhattan.

"It was a dodgy hotel," Fralick says. "On the day we arrived, some pipes exploded and there was a sea of water in our room. Our whole living space was turned into a construction site for most of the time we were there."

Nevertheless, they stayed for four weeks, laying down a dozen tracks in Dobyns' Dubway Studios.

On Friday, Sept. 19, Young Rival is releasing six of those songs in a self-titled EP at a release party in Hamilton's Casbah club at King and Queen streets. It is the first recording the band has released under the name Young Rival. Local fans of indie rock may know the Hamilton quartet better in its prior incarnation as The Ride Theory, which cut two self-produced albums of retro '60s-style Brit rock before the name change to Young Rival last year.

The sound is still similar, heavily influenced by old Kinks and Yardbirds (opening track, Your Island). There is, however, a new dark influence from New York, reminiscent of the sharp guitar sound of late '70s bands like Television (closing track, The Haunt).

"We were never really interested in breaking the spirit of The Ride Theory," Fralick explains. "We just wanted to take the sound a bit further."

The band is already starting to gain attention from key music blog sites such as Pitchforkmedia.com and that's sure to increase with the release of the new EP and a club tour that takes them across Canada for the next six weeks.

Hear Graham Rockingham Thursdays at 4:40 p.m.

on the Scott Thompson show, AM900 CHML. Also visit thespec.com for an audio-video version of

Rockingham's Best Bets.

grockingham@thespec.com

905-526-3331