Odd Blood

Odd Blood is every bit as dense as its predecessor, with every inch of space teeming with exhausting polyrhythmic detail and time-warped synth sounds.

Odd Blood ultimately reveals that beneath all the weird sounds, tribal harmonies and otherworldly textures, Yeasayer are still a bunch of indie-rock sentimentalists.

The album has the feel of a stopping-off point of sorts for a band an evolutionary path, headed toward an even higher level of greatness.

Odd Blood peaks in the middle, with two marvelous extended tracks which take the raw materials of '80s soul and funk and somehow manage to inject the mesmeric, insistent rhythms of Krautrock without making a terrible mess of things.

The biggest, boldest, and best moments on their second album nod flamboyantly to influences never before evident -- Erasure ("Ambling Alp") and Haircut 100 (the tropical "O.N.E."), among others -- but somehow they're seamlessly integrated with trippier old jams.

I wasn't sure whether to listen to the record or call Ghostbusters. But once I plumped for the former, I was somewhat shocked to discover a pop record, full of grooves, melodies and recognisable chorus type-affairs.

The new sound features a dense, Dave Fridmann-like production: pumping, parping, squelching sounds familiar to those from The Flaming Lips, or MGMT, but rarely coupled to such strong hooks, or vocal performances, by either.

Odd Blood comes a cropper at times, but mostly this is an involving album of vivid weirdo pop. [Mar 2010, p.107]

Not so much a step-up, but a masterclass in modern, multicultural, weirdo pop music, Yeasayer's second album is both odd and bloody marvellous.

The feverish approach lends Odd Blood a slithering lo-fi ecstasy, elevating it beyond the similarly buzzing, synth-infused efforts of Yeasayer's peers.

Yeasayer’s greatest achievement is their balancing act, teetering between heartfelt and overly earnest, between invoking and pastiching past decades, between worldly experimentalism and token tourism.

The result is simultaneously stranger and poppier, more celebratory and more serious.

An unfamiliar listener coming in cold to Yeasayer’s second full-length album probably wouldn’t make it too much further than the opener, “The Children.’’ It’s a choppy, dirge-like downer, the soundtrack to a spooky submarine’s descent into the abyss in cinematic slow motion. But it would be a tragic mistake to abandon ship on this avant-pop Brooklyn trio just before the fun starts.

Between the folds of intricate sound on Odd Blood float Yeasayer members Anand Wilder's and Chris Keating's expressive vocal harmonies, giving this seemingly disparate, indefinable music a clear identity.

All in all, this is a rare sophomore album that widens the band's sound without narrowing its appeal.

While it’s still the arrangements that will continue to impress, the words and overall sonic ability speaks paramount to what Yeasayer is capable of.

Willfully odd, beautifully hypnotic and with a wonderful lightness of touch: a straw poll of the office drew comparisons to Flaming Lips, Arcade Fire and Take That. [Feb 2010, p. 100]

More accessible than Animal collective, weirder than MGMT, this is otherworldly pop music to make the head spin. [Mar 2010, p.103]

The album aims for pleasure rather than introspection, and most of the time, it hits the mark.

So yeah, maaaaybe Odd Blood isn’t quite the hive of unfathomably exotic treats that a few of the tracks might have initially suggested. Having given us time to prepare for the fact they’re quite the different band from All Hour Cymbals, Yeasayer Mk II have also given us time to realise that Odd Blood probably isn’t likely to go down as their defining statement.

It’s an unabashed pop record that anyone should be proud to play at full volume.

It’s not what Yeasayer once was, and who cares? They have avoided the sophomore slump the only way they know how: by fearlessly dismantling everything that made their debut a safe bet.

Odd Blood is an album whose highs are higher than its lows are low; those valleys are, however, still very much present.

With Odd Blood, the Brooklyn trio has left behind its most obvious ethnic influences--and its environmental anxiety--for a tighter, more polished sound.

80s-centric brooklyn trio deliver complex second album.

While it almost goes without staying that every band’s aspiration is to ingeniously pique the interest of their listeners by reinventing old elements and coupling them with new and creative tones, it seems this record’s goal is not necessarily to go without saying, but say it all in the fewest possible breaths.

A full half of the album completely works. Congratulating a band on their improvement may seem a bit condescending, but Yeasayer's figuring it out. [Winter 2010, p.70]

Throughout its padded 40-minute run time (like "All Hour Cymbals," it’s got a decent amount of filler), Odd Blood makes a stronger case for what’s up next for the band’s sound than where it is now.