Yeasayer
Odd Blood
Secretly Canadian / Mute / Playground

The Brooklyn based experimental pop-band Yeasayer is back with their much anticipated sophomore album; Odd Blood. And after listing to their first single, Ambling Alp, I for one had high expectations. Expectations that, well, just say I didn't get disappointed. Not disappointed at all.

The first I noticed while listing to Odd Blood was that "Ambling Alp" is not, by far, the best track on this album. Actually, it is on the lower half. If this album could be said to have any really lower half. It is more like every track is on the up-side. With the enchanting "I Remember" as the highest peak. A delightfully light, yet dark, pop-tune, that plays more on the regular modern-retro indie scene, than the border-crossing jumps that resemble most of the other tracks on this oddly good album. Notably enough the chorus also is self-fulfilling, by stating "you're stuck in my mind/all the time". Because that is was it does.

Mentionable is also the enchanting "Madder Red" that touches the velvet edges of the eighties synth-pop, "Love Me Girl" that dives into more distressful and insisting electro-flirtatious soundscapes, and the sci-fi touching repetitiveness on "Mondergreen".

In a way Odd Blood could be said to have been fashioned like an old fashioned LP, where the first five tracks tends to be more accessible indie-disco-pop, while the latter demands more of the listener. And as on the LPs the difference between the two sides works as an enlargement and compliment to each other. The lightness of the pop somewhat brightens the paranoia of the most experimental tracks, while these just gives the pop-oriented songs the perfect touch of pleasurable otherness.

So, then it just for me to say that: Yeasayer have with Odd Blood delivered a magnificent beginning of the music year.

Odd Blood will be released February 9th.

Copyright © 2010 Aslaug O Klausen