Yeasayer
A Confusing World At-Large Deciphered By Wolves And Men
Sep 3, 2007
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Patrick Stolley
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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2080
original version appears on All Hour Cymbals
We wanted the intro to sound like crickets being put into a state of the art woodchipper. The idea of creating a sound that is beautiful but also ominous became an overarching concept for the track. We'd been playing around for a while with a riff that Ira wrote and had turned it into this kind of futurist-spoken word Mapfumo crescendo. We all took turns just singing made up melodies, chants, and making noise over one of the early demo recordings and the song began to take on an otherworldly quality. After adding layers of synths, clarinet, percussion and playing with pitch and speed we came to a sound and concept that was both dystopian and hopeful.
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Final Path
unreleased
This is our dance party on the eve of the armageddon. I think this one was written just after the 2004 elections so we were kind of sure the end of the world was nigh.
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Sunrise
original version appears on All Hour Cymbals
For this one the drums needed to be the main focus. I wanted there to be a step team dance to this one. There must be 10 different recordings of the beat for this song. We made a few beats on the sampler and finally came up with one that had the right feel. Luke then played live drums to mimic the sequence and we chopped up his live drumming after we brought it home from the studio to make it sound more clipped. We also thought that we should walk the fine line between good and bad taste an incorporate a bass solo. A big part of our process is not being afraid to try things that might at first seem like corny ideas.
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Wait for the Summer
original version appears on All Hour Cymbals
This song was an instrumental section for a piece of music we made for a fashion show in New York City last year. We liked the parts so much that we added lyrics to it bit by bit, with the theme of murder in mind. The first half is a bit dark and serious, but the second half lightens up, and the murderous character turns out to be a drunken fool. The live version of "Wait for the Summer" really is a pure drinking song, with a lot of breakdowns, stops and starts, where all the instruments cut out so every old geezer at the bar can be heard clapping and shouting out the choruses.
"Everybody's got the bomb, but if the need stays strong we're gonna dance til we're gone." It"s the first line that Yeasayer lead singer Chris Keating gives forth in a song that postdates everything that is on the band"s debut album -- All Hour Cymbals -- which is set to be released worldwide at the end of next month. It is, in essence, that which we already knew about a record that it exists outside of, but from the same hands. It"s what cracks the code on the overriding thematic nature of the group"s preoccupations - not that the message is hidden or needs relaxed eyeballs to formulate, it"s there, but this just comes right out, says it and gives you a dinner mint for the aftermath.
The band has made a record of apocalyptic confirmation. Those extreme, bold predictions of Al Gore and real-life scientists, not just former vice presidents, of the rapidly approaching demise at the hands of all of us who have enjoyed its fruits and bounty most are not the beliefs of, well, extremists or those bolder than their britches should allow.
It"s a precipitous view of the looming catastrophic changes that are beginning to take hold of the land we call home, like an owl sinking its talons into a completely suspecting field mouse that"s too fat and slow and lazy to move and escape the death grip, and in the societal climate as well, with all-around anger and suspicion replacing benevolence and thinking the best case scenarios are still ripe for the picking. The sky is falling, the air is starting to burn up and should you lift your nose to that falling, balmy sky, you"ll smell it. It"s a fight. There"s always a fight in the air. We wage them with ourselves, everyone else different from us and with the natural earth that is now sickly and rebelling.
Yeasayer, a Brooklyn band that should be seen as an essential compatriot of TV On The Radio, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and The Thermals for their ability to cut through all of the thickest bullshit and lay the emergencies out on the table like blueprints. The doomsday - despite the "comforting" Starbucks chain spreading into all dots on maps and the relative dismissal of anything being wrong or off - is closer now than it"s ever been and perhaps that can always be said. Doomsday is always closer than it was yesterday, just in principal and within the boundaries of the laws of odds.
Keating, Anand Wilder, Luke Fasano and Ira Wolf Tuton mine the downer subjects for what they"re worth and then decorate what they"ve collected with significant indications that would suggest that the negatives should be entertaining and danceable. All Hour Cymbals is an album that feels like a future time that we"ll never ever reach. It feels like an imagining of a world that will find a way to live on in fairy tales of darkness, for all of the deaf ears that will never get a chance to hear them.
The songs are nothing of these days, but of the remote possibility of the continuation of existence long after the plug should have been pulled. When will the official end be? We"ll know it when we see it - that lucid, recognizably totaling flash of white light will be blinding and forever. It will leave us flattened. Let"s dance to our demise, eh Yeasayer? It could be kind of fun to trounce on the ashes before everything"s burned. It"s not jumping the gun if there"s certainty in the pudding.
The Daytrotter interview:
*Where are you right now?*
YEASAYER: We just spent a few days on a farm run by a man called "The Doctor" in Ken, 3 hours south of Mumbai, India. We witnessed a Hindu cremation and went swimming in a waterfall during a monsoon. The monkeys by the side of the road were friendly and the rickshaws were incredibly dangerous. We rented a Bollywod movie set for the day and plan on doing some shooting with our friend Shivraj Santhakumar for an upcoming Yeasayer DVD. We have taught a bunch of hijras the lyrics to some songs and they're going to sing and dance and look beautiful.
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