Having released their debut All Hour Cymbals during the 'all eyes on Brooklyn' high-time in 2007 via We Are Free might have worked in their favour in terms of being in the right place at the right time, but make no mistake, Yeasayer clearly delivered a summer blockbuster full of intruiging entertainment with a prog-rock-psych-folk sunshine glint in their eye, lyrically contrasted with a rather apocalyptic point of view. Pleasant pastoral subtleties met Brian Wilson's darkest dreams through wrongly accused world music songs that clearly refused to adhere to any rules other than their own while flying so sky high, you wanted to tie weights to them.

Two years later the Baltimore formed trio (back then guitarist Anand Wilder once played with Beach House's Alex Scally in a talent show in B-town) are back with ten new songs that still only follow their own logic. Their sophomore album is titled Odd Blood, and odd it certainly is, at least on first impression. Much heavier on the electronic tip than on their debut, the opener The Children feels as if Quasimoto has spontaneously settled down in Williamsburg, followed by first single Ambling Alps that gives you an idea about Yeasayer's poly-rhythmic excellence in 2010 (it's no surprise that they're playing with two drummers now). All Hour Cymbals projected an exciting glimpse into the retro-future of the auditory canals and minds of its audience, now the trio sends tangerine-coloured popcards from a nearby planet where they're sunbathing with HAL. Lodown talked to Anand Wilder, Chris Keating and Ira Tuton in late November.

I think one of the big differences between All Hour Cymbals and your new album is that Odd Blood is a lot more cohesive while, looking back, your debut felt more like a showcase of what your are capable of musically?

Ira: Definitely. That's exactly what it is.

Anand: You know, with the last one we used a different style for each song because it would make it almost impossible to pigeonhole us... and it was important for us because it allowed us to go in any direction we wanted to with our new album without people going 'what the... what happened to them?'.

Chris: But our chances are a bit higher to alienate people with the new material because of exactly the same reason. But at least they cannot accuse us of milking the same idea over and over again. I mean, I would be totally down if people didn't like it... as long as they really didn't like it at all.

Ira: Right, I want them to either love it or fucking hate it.

And the opener The Children is a perfect way to produce exactly that kind of extreme reaction. What's the story behind all these distorted voices?

Chris: I wanted this to be our first single, actually... but the record company wasn't too happy about this idea. I think The Children works best if you see it as a clean break from the last album. It's more like a bold statement than a continuation from the last song of All Hour Cymbals.

Anand: Kids probably expect another 2080 and they will certainly check the CD package again if they're really listening to the right record.

Chris: But it's not about looking for confrontation only, it also goes in line with production techniques we're into. I'm totally down with 60s psych and harmony singing for example... but in this case it's also about going back to my teenage years when I was massively into hip-hop and hip-hop productions. You know, heavy beats and heavy bass. It's a nice creepy start before the album gets a lot more positive, well, at least musically. Our label obviously wasn't too much into the idea of having this as the introduction of the new album, because it sets a really dark tone.

Anand: Well, then just skip it! Since CD's were invented anybody can skip anything, just go for it. (laughs) But if you don't like the first song, you probably were never into Wu-Tang.

Would you agree that lyrically a lot has changed as well? I mean on your debut, it was more about the bigger picture... about how fucked we all are. On Odd Blood it seems to be more about...

Anand: ... how fucked up we are?

Yeah. It's more about your personal stories.

Chris: Yeah, there are more stories this time, while we dealt with mainly vast themes like our bleak future before. This time it's about relationships and specific personal things. And it was a nice challenge to open yourself up and write about these things.

Mute, even though connected to EMI, is one of the bigger indie labels... does that actually matter anymore in 2010? Is it important to still have a physical release?

Anand: We're actually not the biggest fans of blog culture and downloads, to be honest. I still love the aura of having a nice big piece of artwork as your cover. I like to touch things and I still buy magazines. I mean, sure, I read a lot of stuff on the internet... but I actually don't like to look at a screen too much.

Chris: Yeah, you suddenly begin to just read paragraphs, and that's not happening as soon as you hold a magazine in your hands. Same with music, I simply like flipping through my records. I like the way they smell and feel.

Anand: But we're not reactionaries, we're aware that the majority of people will listen to our album probably out of their laptop speakers.

Chris: Yeah, so we made sure that it also sounds awesome on your computer.

Continue reading on next page.

Isn't that kind of annoying... you're putting a lot of thought into the whole thing and then, if you're lucky, people listen to the whole thing on their iPod?

Chris: It's just the way it is, right? Same with movies, people are watching them on tiny screens these days. If you know Apocalypse Now only from your laptop, it'll probably give you a heart attack when you see it on a big screen with massive sound. But I do the same, actually, I listen to a lot of new music on my laptop, and I judge bands by a sound that'd be totally different if you would take the time to listen to it over your stereo system at home. Instead you go 'oh, this band sucks, their sound is so small'. It's just a new level of reality.

The advantage of MP3's actually only occurs to me as soon as it comes to moving to another place...

Chris: Yeah, I totally know what you mean... all this schlepping. It's the same with books, right? Man, I like books, too. I just like having boxes of books... I have way too many that I already carried to four different apartments and I don't think I have opened them once during that time. Some of them are amazing books but how often do you look at a Gerald Richter retrospective even though you know there's amazing stuff in there?

Ira: Same here... but I realised it's about comfort, right? It kinda keeps me warm and makes me realise that I'm at home. And the same with vinyl. It's mainly about the size, the format because for a strange reason it feels human.

Chris: But what about the environment? It's a waste of resources to still produce an album on vinyl, right? I remember one of the ideas for the artwork for Odd Blood was having that glossy UV-lettering on top of this matte-finish and our manager was against it for before mentioned reasons. So maybe we shouldn't do a CD then at all?! I mean I’m aware of all that, but I don't want our release to look shitty, right! But in the end both sides were happy and we didn't use a plastic tray at least.

Anand: (laughs) Yeah, we just got it embroidered in sweatshops instead.

Chris. And it comes in a baby seal... which is wrapped in a dolphin.

Anand: Man, so many ideas that did not fly with our label!

 As a last question, what always slightly annoyed me was that as soon as you talk or read about your music, terms like 'tribal', 'ethno' or 'world music' come to the table... why it actually just always felt like pop music that got rid of a few boundaries to me.

Chris: (pointing at Anand): But look at him... he's our multi-racial guy. Seriously, I mean, at least they're saying something... and somehow I liked it better than indie rock. Yes, it's silly... but it isn't necessarily a bad thing. And it's better than getting addressed as 'these tribal hippie-guys', even though we live in Brooklyn. Man, I can't be around trees for too long because it gives me a panic-attack. I ride the subway every fucking day. I grew up in the city. I'm certainly not one of these hacky sack playing hippies.

Anand: (laughs) But I listened to our album on acid: 'This is so tribal... they're ALL right!'. Why are there so many drums? This sounds like Survivor. Maybe we should call it 'pangea'. Is this maybe our new genre... pangea? Or even better 'paingea'!

Ira: Yeah, that´s T-Pain's new album. Paingea! Is he big over here?

Dunno, maybe with the hip-hop kids...

Chris: He’s kind of a joke...

Ira: But I think he knows he’s a joke.

Seriously, I stopped buying hip-hop in the mid 90s... I'm the wrong person to talk to. I mean, sure there was APC, Def Jux and the guys that were from the more weird side of the tracks like Themselves and stuff.

Chris. C'mon, you can't be serious. There's some fantastic stuff from the late 90s and early 00s. What about Outkast? And what about the new Jay-Z album?

Ira: You don't like Wu-Tang?

Yeah sure, but they didn't make the same impact on me as they would've made years ago... it just became a bit too imagey for me.

Anand: Do we have an image? Do we have street-credibility?

Ira: Please just say yes, or this man here will be left with a shattered ego...

<sub>odd blood / album / Secretly Canadian/Mute
www.yeasayer.net

pics: Megan Cullen
words: Forty</sub>