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By: Wesley
Hodges
 Yeasayer by
Guy Aroch |
In the midst of Yeasayer's
tour rehearsals, JamBase spoke with guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Anand Wilder about the
creation of Odd Blood, the band's expansive
sophomore studio effort, to be released February 9 on the Secretly Canadian imprint. Odd Blood is an
explosive, groundbreaking good time that will rattle the brain and move the body ("keep your feet, feet sliding to
the side, to the side"), and could inspire some copycat attempts down the road. Although some of the singular
influences like Pink Floyd, Depeche
Mode, a number of '80s dance bands, Genesis and MGMT are prevalent, it's safe to say that you've never heard anything quite like Odd
Blood. The band has worked hard to "combine a lot of different elements to create something that's original,
something very different [from 2007's All Hour Cymbals], and something that would still be Yeasayer," as
Wilder told us. From the austerely Battles-esque first track "The Children" to the rousing "Ambling Alp" and on to
"Rome," Odd Blood runs a new kind of gamut. Inherently pop music at its core, Yeasayer's new brand of
Adventure Rock or Bizarro Art-Pop (you just gotta make up fresh genre names with these guys) is ground level
innovation that defies expectations and invitingly beckons listeners to join them.
JamBase: Give us an idea of the creative process that led to the new Yeasayer sound and album.
Anand Wilder: A lot of the songs began as demos that we would knock off in a few days off from touring. A good
chunk of these songs came about in 2007 and 2008. Then me, Ira Wolf Tuton [bass] and Chris
Keating [keyboards, vocals] rented a house up in Woodstock, NY from this guy named Jerry Marotta, who used to drum for Tears for Fears, Peter Gabriel,
Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney. He let us rent his house with all of his music equipment in it. Jerry basically let
us set up our studio in his house with tons of gear and allowed us to use all of his drums, synths, and microphones,
and I think that really contributed to the sound of this record. With this album we really consciously set out to do
something very different from our first record that would still be Yeasayer. We would explore all of our different
interests, and we wanted to accomplish a more direct sounding record with higher vocals and make it a little bit
dancier.
A lot of the record was influenced by performing live the last few years. When the first record came out we didn't
know how much touring we were gonna do, as we were a completely new band. After a year of touring, we kind of
thought, "What kind of stuff do we wanna create that we'll be excited about playing live?" So, that kind of shaped
the sound of the album as well. Whereas the last record was very hazy, very psychedelic, we wanted this one to be
electronic, very computer-based - kind of sci-fi - more of a body record than a mind record, while still retaining
some of the headier, trippy kind of vibe.
JamBase: To me, this one still has the heavily psychedelic feel, just in a more unexplored, futuristic
way.
 Chris Keating -
Yeasayer |
Anand Wilder: Sure, the last one had the nature, communal, hippie kind of vibe that people kind of got and
this one is more of a man/machine, one-ness with technology, and we used computers and music software to their
full potential to create the sound.
The album has more of a humanistic feeling lyrically, whereas musically it's all future sounding. What events
transpired in your lives to lead to this change?
It was more related with the vision and the crafting of songs. We wanted it to be different-sounding and different
lyrically. The last album tackled the grandiose epic themes of the apocalypse and the future, and on this one we just
said, "Let's see if we can just write some love songs." We tried to say the word "love" a lot to make it feel more
personal, to bring it down to Earth. But we still kind of wanted to have that strange, odd Yeasayer juxtaposition, so
if it was a very personal love song we'd make it the most sterile, cold, futuristic, sci-fi sounding thing we could
possibly envision.
Odd Blood has an even more percussive sound than All Hour Cymbals. How were the drum
tracks recorded for the record?
The last album we were very inspired by some really beat-heavy music, but I don't know if it really showed in the
final product because it was so awash in hazy reverb, and this one we really wanted to pronounce the beat so
instead of layering it, it meant taking away so that something more simplistic would come to the foreground.
The way we recorded some of the drums was to do one hit at a time and kind of compress the hell out of it. We had
a really great engineer working with us up in Woodstock named Steve Revitte [Beastie Boys, J. Mascis]. He
was a really invaluable resource to help us execute some of these beats. Then we came to mix in NYC with Britt
Myer, we made sure that he focused on making the beat really heavy and bringing out the subs in the bass. He
had a really objective ear and could say, "I don't know if this sampled drum is moving enough air." We really needed
to get a high quality recording of live drums, to give it the kind of oomph that some of our demos were lacking. It
was definitely a focal point for this album to make the beat as banging as possible. I hope we succeeded at least on
a few songs.
Genesis is one of the artists that came to mind as an influence when I first heard the new record, especially on
tracks like "Madder Red." Who else do you have in mind as similar-sounding influences for this record?
Yeah, that kind of sounds like a Genesis-type song. I always thought it was more of a Depeche Mode kind of vibe. I
even was thinking that it sounds like some of the music from the '90s if like Tracy Chapman was singing over an
industrial beat, or an Oasis song or something. But yeah, we just like to combine a bunch of different styles and if
people say [it] sounds like "nothing they've ever heard before" it'll be a success. We try to combine a lot of different
elements to create something that's original.
Continue reading for more on Yeasayer...
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