In Stores Now: Odd Blood by Yeasayer

Illustration from a poster for the Phillips Climation magic show, c. 1900

It was a show on La Blogotheque that first got me interested in Yeasayer. I'd heard the band's first big single "2080" from their debut album, and I'd liked it, but I'd heard that the album was just so-so overall. It was the mostly a capella performances on a subway car from their "Takeaway Show" that convinced me the band was doing something really interesting. So I bit the bullet and bought Odd Blood, even though it immediately shot to the top of the "Ugliest-Looking Albums I Own" list (see sidebar for details). This album of artsy dance-rock is obviously very different from the improvised live performance that initially caught my interest, but the enthusiasm and creativity I was looking for are abundant and infectious.

Odd Blood's opening track, "The Children", is a the biggest oddity on the album, with a creepy vibe and heavily processed vocals, but I don't mind it because (a) I don't typically like albums' opening tracks anyway, and (b) it serves as a great contrast for the album's second song, the amazing "Ambling Alp". The demented gospel sound of some of their early songs is not a big factor in what makes the new songs like "Ambling Alp" great - there's a wider mix of influences here, from the Canto-pop hooks of "Madder Red" and vague Eastern flourishes of "Strange Reunions" to the Chariots-of-Fireisms of "I Remember". The album's momentum builds nicely as well, only ebbing occasionally as it leads up to the album's danciest number, the blazing "Rome".

After "Rome", Odd Blood slowly comes down from its giddy highs, with the hiccup of "Mondegreen", the album's only poor composition. It's not the terrible lyrics of the song that bother me (although I've heard plenty of criticism of them from others) - the lyrics on all of Odd Blood are pretty simple and often even dumb, but in a harmless way that actually emphasizes the band's sense of fun. The problem with "Mondegreen", for me, is that it brings in an unwanted influence - *ska* - and the sleazy-sounding horn section that comes with it. Funnily enough, it's like the evil twin of the album's best song, "Ambling Alp". But that song uses its horn flourishes for good, not evil, and its gentler reggae inflections work better with the band's shiny-happy approach to music. I also read somewhere that "Mondegreen" is intended to invoke the feeling of Glenn Beck's tear-stained rants, and that's not something I look for in pop music. One weak track is not enough to dampen my enthusiasm for this album, though.

At this point, I think that the only way that Odd Blood won't end up as one of my favorites of 2010 is if I spend too much time looking at its terrible packaging and not enough time listening to its contents.

"Ambling Alp" by Yeasayer