16 – Yeasayer

I’m not really sure when I first heard about Yeasayer. I know they’ve been in my periphery for the past couple years. I’d hear a song of theirs from time to time, but nothing ever grabbed my attention. I also know they were on the bill at last year’s Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, but I never saw them.

Then, within the last month or so, I heard both of their latest singles on the radio, and everything changed for me. My interest had been piqued. I thought I might’ve found an early contender of my eventual “Top 10 of ’10” list, and I had to hear more.

However, I quickly discovered the band was nothing more than a musical version of iron pyrite — you know, fool’s gold.

Yeasayer is a trio that hails from Brooklyn, and its sound is hard to pinpoint. A couple descriptions I read were “semi-experimental rock” and “Middle Eastern-psych-snap-gospel.”

Those are probably about as accurate as anything I could come up with to label Yeasayer’s debut album, All Hour Cymbals, which came out in 2007.

But the album that got me interested in them, Odd Blood, which came out this year, might be a little bit easier to discern. Personally, the best comparison I can make is Hot Chip meets Beirut.

Unfortunately, I’m not a huge fan of Hot Chip, and I’m even less interested in Beirut.

The one thing that I did enjoy was the vocals, especially on the aforementioned singles, “Ambling Alp” and “O.N.E.”

I’ll probably just end up keeping those songs on my iTunes and deleting the rest — kinda like what I did with Bat For Lashes. (Interesting sidenote, Yeasayer helped produce Bat For Lashes’ most recent album, Two Suns.)

Yeasayer – Ambling Alp