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The pair's cryptic lyrics can get lost in the shuffle at times, but Bechtolt and Evans offer enough interesting musical ideas to keep the listener engaged.
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I’m convinced that Bechtolt and Evans have a ton of potential that’s simply going completely unrealized for all but about nine minutes of See Mystery Lights, which leaves it feeling like a party that never actually gets going for some inexplicable reason as everyone involved tries too hard.
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YACHT don't aim to solve the puzzle of life; they just want you to know you're welcome to party round their house anytime you like.
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A generally rambunctious mid-fi indie electropop sitting at an odd remove from the band’s devotional cause.
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Lights certainly has its charms--cribbed Afropop, bits like A Rainbow in Curved Air, and a general poppy through-line--but those charms wear thin when placed up against an entire album’s worth of monotonous, mobius strip dance beats.
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Brainy and block-rocking rarely coexist like this.
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FilterIn the jumble of See Mystery Lights (I can't tell yet if it's the brainwashing taking efffect), I might be willing to commit to whatever they're offering. [Summer 2009, p.98]
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Sci-fi hi-jinks from ‘the nerdy Kraftwerk.’
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MojoYacht are a band that know how to party; they just need to lock it down. [Oct 2009, p.108]
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Helping along YACHT's approach is a frisson of punk attitude, often expressed in Evans' vocals but also helped by a refreshingly unfussy focus on production.
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YACHT’s music is as simple and enjoyable as their philosophy. You won’t end up ruminating on it all night, but you are very likely to enjoy it while it’s on.
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Interesting, but not mind-blowing.
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It's a feel-good album for an era that could use a little happiness, a sweaty collection of heady, hedonistic tunes just in time for the hottest days of the year.
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Indispensable as “Psychic City” may be, See Mystery Lights as a whole isn’t in the same class as these others. That doesn’t mean it can’t be super-fun, and doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check it out.
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Immaculate production and carefully conceived themes are sure to make your nerd-tent a lot bigger, but is the space worth it if you push out even one well-penned ditty?
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The brainy duo--hot-shit remixer Jona Bechtolt and singer/science writer Claire Evans--holed up in a thrown-together studio in rural West Texas and ended up with what might be their breakthrough record.
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The failure of its intellectual structure to fully intersect with the music represents something of a conceptual misstep, but also allows See Mystery Lights to be enjoyed without engaging with any of its ideas, as catchy summer music that leans toward the bizarre.
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The duo are most enjoyable when they just surrender to sweaty delirium on 'Summer Song.'
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Like the music beneath, the words are heady and accessible, leaning slightly toward the former. With some emotional rejiggering, YACHT could end up recording its own tweaked-out punk-funk classic.
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Without a smidgen of a doubt, See Mystery Lights has egghead-party-album-of-the-year potential. But its value is greater than that.
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All these elements, stitched together by Yacht and combined with the kind of melancholy disco utilised so often by DFA associates, have a basic cumulative effect: they make you want to dance.
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It’s indie-rock party music, and its spare-parts feeling comes honestly.
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Although still a strong album, YACHT would do well to better marry its aesthetic with the famous DFA beat factory, instead of giving it such clearly separate airtime.
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UncutMost of the album comes across as a weedy, irritating student pastiche of the DFA sound rather than something that deserves a place in its esteemed catalogue. [Sep 2009, p.105]
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Under The RadarYACHT often keeps flogging the horse long after it's dead. [Summer 2009, p.63]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 13
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Mixed: 2 out of 13
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Negative: 2 out of 13
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Dec 29, 2012