One of the slipperiest things
about great psychedelic rock
bands is that they're working in
a genre that rejects being
pigeonholed by any label.
"'Psychedelia' is such a broad
term," Yeasayer keyboardist and
vocalist Chris Keating told me
when I profiled the band in the
wake of its much-buzzed debut
"All Hour Cymbals" (2007). "I
hate the notion that the music
gets labeled and then all of the
sudden it's 1967 and
Haight-Ashbury, headbands and
tie-dye. I look at Public Enemy
as a pretty psychedelic
band--just the ideas behind
where they're coming from, and
sonically, the way they were
mixing their records and piecing
things together."
This is to
say that the only thing fans who
really understood the expansive
sounds of these
Baltimore-to-Brooklyn
transplants could reasonably
expect from their eagerly
anticipated second album was the
unexpected, and the quartet has
delivered with considerable
success.
Where the mixture of rock,
electronic and worldbeat rhythms
was the most obvious sonic
signature on the band's debut,
and those percolating
undercurrents still power much
of "Odd Blood," the vocals and a
new focus on pop songcraft are
what distinguish this disc, from
the rousing sing-along hook of
"Madder Red" (a standout in
concert when the band played
last year's Pitchfork Music
Festival) to the intimate vocal
delivery of the'80s-falvored
electronic ballad "I Remember."
Like many psychedelic
rockers, the members of Yeasayer
are optimistics, if not
utopians. "The world can be
an unfair place at times/But
your lows will have their
compliment of highs," they
sing on "Ambling Alp." The 10
tracks on "Odd Blood" pack
enough sugary hooks to keep you
high for a month, while the
sophisticated arrangements and
more mind-boggling than ever
polyrhythms firmly mark the band
as an equal to its neighbors and
fellow travelers TV on the Radio
and Animal Collective.
This is to say that the only thing fans who really understood the expansive sounds of these Baltimore-to-Brooklyn transplants could reasonably expect from their eagerly anticipated second album was the unexpected, and the quartet has delivered with considerable success.
Where the mixture of rock, electronic and worldbeat rhythms was the most obvious sonic signature on the band's debut, and those percolating undercurrents still power much of "Odd Blood," the vocals and a new focus on pop songcraft are what distinguish this disc, from the rousing sing-along hook of "Madder Red" (a standout in concert when the band played last year's Pitchfork Music Festival) to the intimate vocal delivery of the'80s-falvored electronic ballad "I Remember."
Like many psychedelic rockers, the members of Yeasayer are optimistics, if not utopians. "The world can be an unfair place at times/But your lows will have their compliment of highs," they sing on "Ambling Alp." The 10 tracks on "Odd Blood" pack enough sugary hooks to keep you high for a month, while the sophisticated arrangements and more mind-boggling than ever polyrhythms firmly mark the band as an equal to its neighbors and fellow travelers TV on the Radio and Animal Collective.