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View attachment 40024
View attachment 40026
Released on 17/12/07
Label: We Are Free
Reviewed By: Sharon O'Connell
Brooklyn - as anyone with even the slimmest grasp of socio-geography knows - is New York's nexus of creative cool and has, in the past eight or so years, thrown-up a staggering number of excellent, achingly hip bands with ever accelerating frequency. However, these bands generally fall into one of three categories - art-punk, electro or noise/avant rock - and tend to boast aggressively pop culture-referencing or 'challenging' names. Which is one of the reasons why the unfashionably positivist Yeasayer stand-out like the proverbial terrier's testicles. The other is their excellent debut album.
These four Baltimore émigrés arrive championing Paul Simon, Cyndi Lauper and the soundtrack to "Oliver!", which points not to irony, but to their genuine love of the pop hook and a refreshing enthusiasm for communicating the hopeful and upbeat to their fans. They describe their medium as "Middle-Eastern psych-pop/snap-gospel", which is intriguing, but fails to convey the dreamy, cream-whipped blend of Tears For Fears, Thomas Mapfumo, Neil Young, David Byrne, Fleetwood Mac, Robert Wyatt, African high-life, rebetika, black spiritual music and Aboriginal chanting that pumps through "All Hour Cymbals".
Yeasayer's creative kinfolk are most obviously TV On The Radio and fellow former Marylanders Animal Collective, but whereas the former dip into dark, densely textured atmospherics as well as surfing exultant euphoria and the latter also favour psychedelic-techno wig-outs, Yeasayer's programme sticks fairly firmly to the principal of "communal ecstatic revelry" as espoused by singer and keys/samples man, Chris Keating.
The record opens with the sweetly shimmering "Sunrise", a flickering mix of syncopated, bass drum-driven beats overlaid with synthesised marimba and a gorgeous, keening mesh of vocal harmonies, then eases into the mellow, sun-steeped "Wait For The Summer", which, like most of the album, owe far more to African roots music than Western. Lead single "2080" offers more divinely dizzying uplift, the use of a children's choir - usually unforgivably saccharine - actually boosting, rather than bloating the effect.
The positive high-life vibe carries through the album until "Wait For The Wintertime", aptly enough an altogether darker affair, its pounding drums and anguished, whooping vocal harmonies striking an almost gothic note, while reminding us that we must embrace winter as a complement to and trade-off for summer. "Worms" throws a rather more conventionally rocky shape, initially recalling early Echo And The Bunnymen - had Ian McCulloch grown-up in the African veldt, rather than Liverpool - before gradually disappearing in a deliciously vaporous mist of faux marimba, electronic FX and sighing vocal harmonies.
"All Hour Cymbals" closes with "Red Cave", which recalls both African and traditional English round singing in its sweet vocal symphonics and Keating's hypnotic repetition of the chorus, "In my short life I have met so many people I deeply care for", a sentiment somehow utterly resistant to cynicism. Like the rest of "All Hour Cymbals", it reads like the sweetest devotional music for these uncertain and godless times.
Track List:
1. Sunrise
2. Wait for the Summer
3. 2080
4. Germs
5. Ah, Weir
6. No Need To Worry
7. Forgiveness
8. Wait for the Wintertime
9. Worms
10. Waves
11. Red Cave
View attachment 40026
Released on 17/12/07
Label: We Are Free
Reviewed By: Sharon O'Connell
Brooklyn - as anyone with even the slimmest grasp of socio-geography knows - is New York's nexus of creative cool and has, in the past eight or so years, thrown-up a staggering number of excellent, achingly hip bands with ever accelerating frequency. However, these bands generally fall into one of three categories - art-punk, electro or noise/avant rock - and tend to boast aggressively pop culture-referencing or 'challenging' names. Which is one of the reasons why the unfashionably positivist Yeasayer stand-out like the proverbial terrier's testicles. The other is their excellent debut album.
These four Baltimore émigrés arrive championing Paul Simon, Cyndi Lauper and the soundtrack to "Oliver!", which points not to irony, but to their genuine love of the pop hook and a refreshing enthusiasm for communicating the hopeful and upbeat to their fans. They describe their medium as "Middle-Eastern psych-pop/snap-gospel", which is intriguing, but fails to convey the dreamy, cream-whipped blend of Tears For Fears, Thomas Mapfumo, Neil Young, David Byrne, Fleetwood Mac, Robert Wyatt, African high-life, rebetika, black spiritual music and Aboriginal chanting that pumps through "All Hour Cymbals".
Yeasayer's creative kinfolk are most obviously TV On The Radio and fellow former Marylanders Animal Collective, but whereas the former dip into dark, densely textured atmospherics as well as surfing exultant euphoria and the latter also favour psychedelic-techno wig-outs, Yeasayer's programme sticks fairly firmly to the principal of "communal ecstatic revelry" as espoused by singer and keys/samples man, Chris Keating.
The record opens with the sweetly shimmering "Sunrise", a flickering mix of syncopated, bass drum-driven beats overlaid with synthesised marimba and a gorgeous, keening mesh of vocal harmonies, then eases into the mellow, sun-steeped "Wait For The Summer", which, like most of the album, owe far more to African roots music than Western. Lead single "2080" offers more divinely dizzying uplift, the use of a children's choir - usually unforgivably saccharine - actually boosting, rather than bloating the effect.
The positive high-life vibe carries through the album until "Wait For The Wintertime", aptly enough an altogether darker affair, its pounding drums and anguished, whooping vocal harmonies striking an almost gothic note, while reminding us that we must embrace winter as a complement to and trade-off for summer. "Worms" throws a rather more conventionally rocky shape, initially recalling early Echo And The Bunnymen - had Ian McCulloch grown-up in the African veldt, rather than Liverpool - before gradually disappearing in a deliciously vaporous mist of faux marimba, electronic FX and sighing vocal harmonies.
"All Hour Cymbals" closes with "Red Cave", which recalls both African and traditional English round singing in its sweet vocal symphonics and Keating's hypnotic repetition of the chorus, "In my short life I have met so many people I deeply care for", a sentiment somehow utterly resistant to cynicism. Like the rest of "All Hour Cymbals", it reads like the sweetest devotional music for these uncertain and godless times.
Track List:
1. Sunrise
2. Wait for the Summer
3. 2080
4. Germs
5. Ah, Weir
6. No Need To Worry
7. Forgiveness
8. Wait for the Wintertime
9. Worms
10. Waves
11. Red Cave