Dying Was Much Better (Odd Blood Album Review)

Melancholy dying is a common theme in modern blues inspired rock, but few have done it so thrillingly (or so happily) as Yeasayer's first album All Hour Cymbals. With a bell toll piano and a piercing baby scream, "Sunrise" began the album with a inspired new version of an over-used Carpe diem motif:

"The sky cracked a million ways making me blind / and as the trees grew higher and higher / and the fish began to fly/ I went and stole some wings / and thought why can't I"

Then, the album closed with the remarkable (if you have surround sound) funeral dirge "Red Cave": a mystical celebration at the swirling end. A musical heaven, equivalent to the Northern Lights:

"I went out past the willow and the well / caught my breath upon the hill / at the edge of the domain"

A well executed concept in a very over-used theme: dying, real good. Now we have Yeasayer's sophomore attempt, Odd Blood, to be released February 2nd via a shiny new label (Secretly Canadian). My first impression was the same thrill that opened All Hours--"Grizelda" is like a lost Paul McCartney track fronted by Anand Wilder's well seasoned voice. Grizelda is layered with programmed beats and a delicatessen of influences and world beats. Anand's harmonies are seamless and interesting. That's about the last inspiration I had. The rest of the album takes on the derivative shape of a worn nightclub. Alternate singer Chris Keating's fronted songs are hollowed out, 90's melodrama rock like "I Remember" and "Ambling Alp":

"I remember making out on the airplane / Still afraid of flying but with you I'd die today."
(more after the jump)

As opposed to the ethereal, cosmic heaven in All Hour's "Red Cave," "I Remember"'s death sequence is a boring, movie trailer afterlife. I'm tempted to contact the band, and ask if they listened excessively to The Counting Crows before recording. Anand's tracks, "O.N.E" and "Madder Red" are the most pleasing and fun, but the album has a hard time not preferring sound over substance. I have no issue with programming and exotic, digital percussion when they add dimension to an already scintillating lyric, but Odd Blood is less a kaleidoscope--it's more one of those plastic telescopes you get when you're a kid.

The sound isn't new if you're in touch with college rock these days: Neon Indian, Animal Collective, etc. all sound like bands from a Philip Dick novel. Songs like the effortlessly good "My Girls" (Animal Collective) are sensual, illuminating and feverously great. Odd Blood never pushes past the flash. In All Hours Cymbals, they were able to match the zoo of sounds with some new, almost Buddhist stories. It's possible to be dying and cool, but it's better to be dying, smart and cool.

Yeasayer - Ambling Alp