Yeasayer - Odd Blood

Odd Blood, Yeasayer's second album, is the most poppy thing they've released yet. The willfully weird experimental rock band that nN likes to inaccurately label as the poor-man's Animal Collective (those in the know would know that Animal Collective is the poor-man's Animal Collective) have made an album of compulsively singable tunes. Whether they'll stand the test of time is up in the air, but I hope they do.

The album starts out with The Children, perhaps the least singable track on the album. A decidedly sweeping track, it perhaps would have fared better without the robotic voice. But never mind: lead singer Chris Keating's vocal cords are on full display for the rest of the album, singing such earnest, slightly embarrassing lines as "You must stick up for yourself, son/never mind what anybody else done." The track that's taken from, Ambling Alp, is perhaps the perfect example of the infectious power of Yeasayer. Driven by that chorus and buzzing synths, it's a track that worms into your head and stays there.

Yeasayer's power lays in selecting the best of the music world and making it into garish hooks. On Strange Reunions, the band walk down the beaten psychedelic path, but even then, they can still make it hummable. ONE sounds positively foreign. But Yeasayer is no Vampire Weekend, and a good thing too. While Vampire Weekend seem to be almost serious about their vaguely African sounding music, Odd Blood is bursting with tongue-in-cheek flippancy. They also know how far to take that flippancy, and the album never becomes a farce, even with lines like "Everybody's talking 'bout me and my baby, making love till the morning light."

That last lyric? That's off Mondegreen. No, I didn't know what that meant until Wikipedia. The most important thing is that with Odd Blood, Yeasayer have made an album bursting with fun. You might not want your friends to hear it (unless they're hipsters), but you will want your ears to.

-K