Music

In recent weeks, we’ve had plenty to say about the bland, unadventurous and generic ‘indie rock’ which is beginning to suffocate our charts, airwaves and medium-sized concert venues. And we stand by every word of it. Measured on the industry-standard, blokes-with-guitars scale, this has been a desperately mediocre year. So it’s an absolute pleasure to report that all is not lost.   

Yeasayer hail from Brooklyn and they’ve made a wonderful debut album. Beyond this, hard facts about them are not immediately forthcoming and in this information-saturated age, this is refreshing in itself. Instead of informative websites, carefully orchestrated press campaigns and premature Wikipedia pages, they offer mystery, exuberance and an overwhelming sense that creativity and communication render any other considerations irrelevant.

Obvious reference points include Animal Collective, TV On The Radio and Gang Gang Dance, but this only tells part of the story. There’s an unpredictability to Yeasayer, a sense that we’re unsafe in their hands. They croon and swoon like a barbershop quartet, chant and clatter like an African tribe, balance melody and improvisation to perfection and offer grandeur and intimacy in equal measure. They even channel the glossy production sheen of ’80s soft rock into their wide-eyed, open-hearted aesthetic although there’s not the slightest hint of Guilty Pleasures-style kitsch – it’s simply another sonic template to manipulate.

Yeasayer suggest an alternative approach to the instant, cheap, universal access principle. Within their essentially indie-rock sensibility, there are flashes of Balkan balladry, African hi-life and eastern dronescapes. Rather than simply finding more efficient means of delivering a worn-out message, Yeasayer are a benign vortex sucking anything and everything into their orbit and using it to create something new.