Hopefully there’s still enough room on people’s psych plates for Odd Blood, a masterful follow-up that deserves to get into your ears.
Odd Blood is every bit as dense as its predecessor, with every inch of space teeming with exhausting polyrhythmic detail and time-warped synth sounds. Yeasayer is still adept at filtering primal emotions through the complex circuits of the future; it’s just that that future looks a lot brighter than it used to.
Odd Blood comes a cropper at times, but mostly this is an involving album of vivid weirdo pop.
Between the folds of intricate sound on Odd Blood float Yeasayer members Anand Wilder's and Chris Keating's expressive vocal harmonies, giving this seemingly disparate, indefinable music a clear identity.
The feverish approach lends Odd Blood a slithering lo-fi ecstasy, elevating it beyond the similarly buzzing, synth-infused efforts of Yeasayer's peers.
The fact that these guys can expand their sound and still feel entirely comfortable in their own specific framework, much less top themselves a second time around, is proof enough that Yeasayer are one of the best at what they do.
Yeasayer’s wit and inventiveness always manages to avoid any kind of descent into cliché.
Odd Blood’s emphasis on genre-mashing can overwhelm the weaker tunes, whose melodies are sometimes less interesting than the arrangements themselves, but the album has enough highlights to outweigh any filler on side B.
The biggest, boldest, and best moments on their second album nod flamboyantly to influences never before evident — Erasure (“Ambling Alp”) and Haircut 100 (the tropical “O.N.E.”), among others — but somehow they’re seamlessly integrated with trippier old jams.
Maaaaybe Odd Blood isn’t quite the hive of unfathomably exotic treats that a few of the tracks might have initially suggested.
Odd Blood is an album whose highs are higher than its lows are low; those valleys are, however, still very much present.
With Odd Blood, the Brooklyn trio has left behind its most obvious ethnic influences—and its environmental anxiety—for a tighter, more polished sound.
Throughout its padded 40-minute run time (like All Hour Cymbals, it’s got a decent amount of filler), Odd Blood makes a stronger case for what’s up next for the band’s sound than where it is now.
A tighter, slicker, poppier sophomore album tries on every imaginable sound and style-- but none is as original or effective as the one they started with.
The more tastefully formulated tracks just can’t offset the profusion of soppy lyricism and the tedium of weaker songs. Ultimately, Odd Blood reads as a well-informed but poorly executed homage to the ‘80s.
For all their promise, Yeasayer are still possibly a touch too clever-clever in their structure and rhythms for the mainstream.
With Odd Blood, Yeasayer earn their stripes as indie-pop innovators, but they would surely benefit from exercising just a tad more control over their wild, conflicting urges.
An overcooked vanity piece from a band inflated by praise, Odd Blood heads in every direction at once.
We couldn't have asked for better singles to start off the new decade than Ambling Alp and ONE.
Falling face first in an audio acid trip through time and space. Clear influnces of tears for fears and depeche mode but combined with a sparkly electronic indian infused sound. This album has a little bit for every listener.
Falling face first in an audio acid trip through time and space. Clear influnces of tears for fears and depeche mode but combined with a sparkly electronic indian infused sound. This album has a little bit for every listener.
We couldn't have asked for better singles to start off the new decade than Ambling Alp and ONE.
1 | The Children 3:12 | 82 |
2 | Ambling Alp 3:55 | 84 |
3 | Madder Red 4:03 | 86 |
4 | I Remember 4:23 | 84 |
5 | O.N.E. 5:23 | 91 |
6 | Love Me Girl 5:00 | 81 |
7 | Rome 3:48 | 79 |
8 | Strange Reunions 2:35 | 75 |
9 | Mondegreen 4:37 | 77 |
10 | Grizelda 2:40 | 80 |
#5 | / | American Songwriter |
#8 | / | Drowned in Sound |
#8 | / | Time |
#9 | / | One Thirty BPM |
#11 | / | Under the Radar |
#12 | / | Gigwise |
#12 | / | Spin |
#13 | / | musicOMH |
#14 | / | Stereogum |
#14 | / | The Guardian |