Alien Invasion - Yeasayer

The three members of one of Brooklyn's weirdest bands wear their eclectic influences on their sleeves. As industrial music bleeds into dancehall, and dancehall blends into hip-hop, Yeasayer's music evolves into a fusion of oddity and experimentation.

Odd Blood, Yeasayer's second album, begins with "The Children," a bizarrely creepy apocalyptic tune where Chris Keating and Anand Wilder sing through a large fan. It's not a trick they learned in the studio — the idea actually came from something a lot simpler.

"It was something I used to do when I was a little kid," says Wilder. "We would scream into a huge fan in the cafeteria, 'Auntie Em! Auntie Em!'"

Just like that, childhood fun was transformed into wild, off-the-cuff vocal riff. Wilder likes the little details that make the music slightly off-kilter: "We were like, 'If aliens were thinking of the history of pop music on the radio, what kind of music would they make?' And this is it."

Read the rest here at the Cleveland Scene.

Yeasayer, While You Wait

Which face does not belong?

I apologize for the slowdown in posts. It's all for good reason, I assure you. I've been slaving away (ok, fine, so interviewing some of your favorite bands isn't slaving, but cut me a break) writing some hefty articles on the Apples in Stereo, Yeasayer, and schtuff. (P.S. I also work a day job. 45 hours a week. If you can pay my salary to blog full-time, my answer will be "YES!" in a hot second.)

The great thing is, as I slave, as I transcribe, and as I rub my head against the wall in tedium, I find some gems - er, amusing quotes.

When I asked Anand Wilder of Yeasayer how he feels about the uniformity in the sound and mood of a Beach House album, as compared to the wild mood swings of Odd Blood, here's what he said:

“If I’m in a mood where I just want to listen to really beautiful music, and relax, and kinda bliss out, then I want to listen to the Beach House album. You could listen to it all the way through without getting annoyed. I feel like our album, we’re trying to do something different. We’re trying to do something different on every song, and some songs are soothing, some songs are dancey, some songs are kinda hypnotic and mesmerizing, other ones are really dark and sound maybe more like movie background music than a song. You could say there are advantages and disadvantages to both styles. Maybe our album is not very cohesive, and it’s all over the place, but I think I would just get too bored if I was playing songs that all sounded the same on the road. We like to use a sound for one song, and that’s it – it’s kinda used up. You want to find something new. But I think that’s really just up to a person, the individual taste. I think if we were really sophisticated, we could make an album that had a similar kind of sound, and it would also be really interesting from front to finish, but I don’t know if we’re good enough to be able to do that.”

Question of the Hour

Are the members of Yeasayer aliens?

Folks, I'm about to find out. Interview, ensue.

Interviewmania February!

I'm doing interviews with Dawes, Yeasayer, and Rocky Votolato all in the next few weeks. I freakin can't wait.

P.S. They will all be available to you via podcast. Cuz I got a sweet Tascam recorder. Get ready to dig in.