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Track List
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Mischievous from the word go, Yeasayer's second album Odd Blood opens with a musical red herring. With its clunky electronics, cow bells and slo-mo vocals, The Children sounds like a nasty 1970s Peter Gabriel single played at 33rpm. It's best taken as a palate cleanser, providing a clear break between the stately mystique of their debut All Hour Cymbals and the unashamedly crowd-pleasing yet deceptively complex remainder of the new album.
Odd Blood consists mainly of rhythmic, catchy, '80s-inflected pop; drawing upon everything from U2 to Eurythmics to Dexy's Midnight Runners. Which isn't to say that it's trendy pastiche; or that Yeasayer have sold out in any respect. Unlike fellow Brooklynites MGMT and Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer retain enough depth and weirdness to keep the most cynical hipsters twirling their moustaches in admiration.
When Yeasayer debuted in 2007 with All Hour Cymbals, they were a Brooklyn art-pop group intriguingly out of step with their peers. They carried an air of mystery and surprise, and at their best ("2080", "Sunrise") managed to make offbeat mysticism and off-kilter pop music seem attractive and exciting. They were basically a rootsy, classic rock-ish version of MGMT then. Their fate seemed doubly sealed by "Tightrope", their laser-focused and damn near best-in-show contribution to the all-star charity compilation Dark Was the Night.
Then they arguably topped that with "Ambling Alp", the pre-release single to sophomore album Odd Blood. "Alp" managed to retain the leftfield bona fides within an easy-to-love glassy pop sheen. That duality extended to the lyrics as well: The song is about infamous Italian boxer Primo Carnera, but in the chorus Chris Keating sang the kind of wholesome fatherly advice you might hear in a Shrek montage.
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