Yeasayer
All Hour Cymbals
We Are Free, 2007
By Allana Mayer
All Hour Cymbals is tricky. The first track, anyways, is misleading, and sets you up for a slew of comparisons to various ’80s synth-poppers and maybe even The Rapture (remember The Rapture, guys? Try hard now). “Sunrise” opens the album by baffling the shit out of you, with its wildly inappropriate bass riffing and cheesy falsettoing – yet your shoulders and toes will inexplicably start moving to the dense selection of beats.
It’s the way I felt when Hot Chip outshone Four Tet at a gig a few years back, wearing oversized sunglasses, mugging à la Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and sucking up the energy of the crowd. Who are these Yeasayer bastards and how did they get such quick access to my muscle movements? They’ll probably be the new Justice…
Unfortunately, the album transitions to something a little Panda Bear/Animal Collective, a little Akron/Family: the tendencies are towards gospel harmonizing and tambourine-heavy, clap-along folk rhythms. The synths and samples resurface throughout the album, but with less intensity. Nothing else on the album recaptures the boundless youthful anger of “Sunrise,” and I find myself disappointed by that fact. Things degenerate into rustic rounds of fireside chants that, though engaging, aren’t what you’ve channelled your mindset into. The album actually seems to wear down towards the end, as if your record player is tiring out and gradually slowing to a standstill by the last note. “Worms” is an excellent track on its own, for example, but when you give the whole disc a spin the song just seems to tug at you. Then Yeasayer somehow decide to go Celtic and jig their way out with “Red Cave,” also not a horrible tune on its own, but completely out of place here.
Through it all I keep getting this inkling that the band’s trying to say something, somewhere, of importance… It’s lost in the melodrama, though. I’ll try my hand anyways, and guess: post-apocalyptic religion for the new savages, based on moderate drinking and heavy philosophizing. There’s a definite doomsday touch to the majority of All Hour Cymbals, and it’s an appealing contrast to the feel-good vibes of their peers, but Yeasayer have another couple years in the desert before being proclaimed anyone’s saviours.
Yet they still might manage some dance-floor tenure. Some songs have ass-shaking potential, but aren’t self-sufficient as club hits. A quick house beat will fix that, though. Go go remix album!
I really hope that “Go go remix album!” comes into common usage in music reviews.
I promise nothing.
(I agree, though.)