New Music: Yeasayer - Odd Blood

Yeasayer has been a favorite since the first time I heard their debut album, All Hour Cymbals (it was my #8 album of 2007). I wrote about that album HERE when this blog was only a few months old and I've been following what they've been up to ever since. Since the debut album came out, they've toured endless and have been correctly labeled as one of the greatest live bands around right now. I was lucky enough to see them twice at Lollapalooza in '08....once at the festival and once at an aftershow opening for Broken Social Scene and I can confirm their greatness live). They also contributed one of the best tracks, 'Tightrope', to an absolutely stunning charity compilation Dark Was The Night.

Now, they are back with their second album, Odd Blood (out yesterday on Secretly Canadian). After spinning it 2 or 3 times immediately after getting it, I knew that if anything this album was going to be extremely polarizing. It will certainly win Yeasayer a lot of new fans, but I'd imagine there will be a bit of a backlash from fans of the debut. That's too bad though because this album is really fucking good.

Listening to it straight through almost reminds me of listening to vinyl. It seems like it was clearly designed to have two separate sides to the record. While the lead track 'The Children' is as weird as anything they've recorded, the rest of side one contains the most pop sounding tracks they've done.

Songs like 'Ambling Alp' (the lead single) and 'One' (Yeasayer's dance jam on the album) would have fit nicely on the debut album. However tracks like 'Madder Red' (the most mainstream sounding song on the album) and 'I Remember' (one of the sweeter love songs I've heard in a while) are pretty different from anything they've done previously. As much as I love the first half of the album, the second half is just as good, in fact 'Rome' and the final track 'Grizelda' could easily compete for best track on the album.

Pitchfork hasn't reviewed the album yet, but they did put up this really cool video of Yeasayer recording Odd Blood in the studio. Check that out HERE.

Finally, here's the video for the first single, 'Ambling Alp' (warning, it's NSFW...there's some naked people running around):





Yeasayer Myspace

-Matt