This is an album that I’ve been playing over and over throughout the last month but never got around to writing about. Partly, because of the equivocally unusual sound they make but also because All Hours Cymbals is an album that requires many repeated listens to grasp its core.
Following on from their Brooklyn neighboorhood peers such as Grizzly Bear, this is noise divested of the foundations of most indie music. Yet, it fits right into the ethos of assimilating outside sources to produce something which extends the canon of what is considered indie. Ingesting African rhythms (like current hot tips for 2008 and fellow New Yorkers Vampire Weekend) and weaving them alongside radiant melodies and clean guitar lines, it sounds full and imagistic.
Key to the uniqueness of the record is the voice of Chris Keating. Simultaneously strident and brittle, it’s somewhere between Cedric Bixler-Zavala (The Mars Volta) and David Byrne. Byrne fits the bill as reference for Yeasayer’s feral ethnic inspirations throughout the record, as the band trod the new world path Byrne blazed in recent times.
Backing up Keating are his disciples versed in chant, harmony and crescendo, making the songs swell with otherwordly quality. Opener “Sunrise” kicks in with a-capella woos and tribal drums. We’re introduced to the album’s main theme – the coming of cataclysmic change, an uncertain modern world where “fish began to fly”. The song’s heart belong to an Amazonian rainforest rather than a Brooklyn studio. “Waiting for the Summer” knocks you further into the foliage with a distinctly African guitar line and incantations while the sense of foreboding is further established – “Won’t someone help me please?”.
You begin to understand that Yeasayer don’t settle easily. Songs can start one place but quickly disassemble and morph into something new. Third track “2080” pushes the irregular rhythms past the point of indie as Keating ruminates “I can’t sleep when I think about the times we’re living in /I can’t sleep when I think about the future I was born into” yet offers a personal remedy – “It’s a New Year, / I’m glad to be here / It’s the first spring, /So let’s sing.” but not without offering another warning – “Never look ahead.” In the closing crescendo you can hear children repeat his musings, almost as if this is an aural reference to children being the future. Puke onto your keyboard now. Regardless, it sounds heavenly.
Elsewhere, samplers, synths and accordions (“Germs”) and hypnotising vocals (“Ah, Weir”, “No Need to Worry”) are utilised. The album’s epilogue “Red Cave” is a joyful denoument – each member sounding cleansed, refuged and out of the woods of ill-thought, singing “I’m so pleased to have the good times with my family / and the friends I love in my short life / I have met so many people I deeply care for”.
The album is so full of mystic, it could all so easily collapse into neo-spiritual bullshit (Kula Shaker anyone?) but the arrangements glitter with nacreous percussion and luminescent guitar lines. It helps that for much of the album, Keatings vocals are blurred but still burn with beautiful intent.
MP3
[audio:https://nialler9.com/mp3/Yeasayer_-_Sunrise.mp3] [audio:https://nialler9.com/mp3/Yeasayer_-_2080.mp3]Yeasayer: Myspace | Official | Daytrotter Session
[ Buy All Hour Cymbals: iTunes | Amazon | eMusic ]
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
Nice one Naill.
I’ve downloaded the 4 songs at Daytrotter and I’ve to say it’s really good.
Thanks for the tip man. 🙂
I love the smell of new music in the morning.
Mmmm mmm
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2080 is pretty amazing. Nice to hear some indie with a really good bassplayer. Love the kids chorus at the end too
It is indeed really good. Is there fretless bass or something on it. I’ve listened to it a bunch but the only one that consciously sticks in my head is “the single” 2080. Still the vague memory I have of it is excellent.
Sounds nothing like Vampire Weekend, I don’t think tho. They seem to be unfortunate by virtue of the fact that their backlash seems to have started before they got to release their album, which is pretty good, like the Strokes., NME is going to have a fucking drool party about it, make it more difficult to enjoy but Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa is fantastic.
[quote post=”966″]Sounds nothing like Vampire Weekend, I don’t think tho.[/quote]
I didn’t say they sound like Vampire Weekend, but they have the same kind of ethos of non-Western influences.
Not too gone on VW, though. Mansard Roof is great but I still have to give it a proper listen.
I probably should’ve concentrated more when actually replying there! I suppose there is some thread for connecting bands like that. It’d be interesting to see whether the African guitar styles they use are kind of vague approximatiosn by ear or whether they study it in depth. Cos the start of the Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa sounds like it could be off Graceland but its really simple and straightforward where as What I See by Dirty Projectors sounds like it could be off a crazy African record and is very complicated.
Mansard Roof is indeed a “choooooooooooon”.
Good album. I’m having a hard time hearing the “nacreous percussion” though…
@Ian: Yes, their bassist used a fretless bass when I saw them a few weeks ago. Good ear.