Photo: Mark Perlaki
Last year saw Yeasayer touted with a top 10 slot in the Gigwise Albums of the Year 2007 with the release of their blinding genre-busting album, 'All Hour Cymbals', wowing fans and critics alike. Yeasayer are often clumped together with the Brooklyn renaissance of Vampire Weekend, with their sometime touring partners MGMT, The Dirty Projectors, as well as Of Montreal all drinking from the same water supply. Whilst Yeasayer are undoubtedly influenced by world rhythms as Vampire Weekend are by African rhythms, there's a depth and mystery at the heart of Yeasayer that defies the immediacy of the smarty-pants button-down-collar of Vampire Weekend's preppy pop pastiche, for Yeasayer are dressed down and far too-cool-for-skool for any of that. Reports have it that Yeasayer are having to finance their UK tour on family borrowings because they don't have the big label backing, something a re-issue of 'All Hour Cymbals' this month will hopefully amend.
This leg of the tour catches Yeasayer with four UK shows and their first north of the border, but on this evenings performance they'll be favouring a Scotland return over London. Support comes from Glasgow's highly capable five-piece, Wilson Tan. Steel Slides create ambiance of an atmospheric alt-country flavour, with harmonica and a hoochy koochy country-rock like a wayward Grateful Dead, harping back to another time, another place - the West Coast in mind here is not of Scotland but of California and its' coastal stretches with grooving swamp-California stylings form Wilson Tan.
Yeasayer's Myspace page has obliterated any list of comparison bands and influences, and less in evidence tonight is their fondness for Cyndi Lauper, and it's some way before the Fleetwood Mac chimes show through. An intrigue matched in their performance where genre and categorisation defiance finds them opening with a Hawkwind-like psychedelic workout which conceals easy detection amidst the drum flourishes, keyboard samples, and Chris Keating's Gary Numan-sound-alike vocal, Yeasayer are giving vigorous re-workings of their songs with three-piece chants and harmonies and a mercurial delivery from all compounded by Chris’s jerky, agitated kinetic motions as he wrestles and twists, gnarly-like. The polish and sheen of the album recordings is traded for a live vigour and vim that's more a cross of a restrained-Animal Collective, Velvet Underground and MGMT than Peter Gabriel or Talking Heads. Taking a cue from Tom Wolfe's book 'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test' of Ken Kesey and his entourage turning on America to LSD, Yeasayer are like a musical vision of the Merry Pranksters pushing the genre envelope and creating music with a breadth and vision that makes much that is indie seem paltry in comparison, coupled with a frontier spirit in their personal names like something out of Thoreau's 'Walden Pond'.
Psychedelic washes and samples, tambourines, hand-claps and chants are brought into the fray with a complete and engaged sound that an eight-piece band would hanker for, but then it's some three years that Yeasayer have been playing together. Pounding tribal beats, free-form composition, African rhythms and the Middle-Eastern switch of the forthcoming single ‘Wait For The Summer’ with the discernible lines “…someone help me/ someone help me please/ there's an accidental flaw…” prove hypnotic and groovy, engaging a crowd hooked into Yeasayer’s tribalism, “…rising/ rising/ falling…” with Fleetwood Mac harmonies crossed with The Incredible String Band woodland merriment, Glasgow endearing to Yeasayer where London missed the boat.
More than just an indie guitar band or a world music homage band, Yeasayer use technology with towering tribal rhythms from Luke Fasano on drums and sample pad, Anand Wilder on guitars, and a warmth from Ira Wolf Tuton's fret-less bass and David Crosby 'tache, singing with the three-piece Beach Boys-esque sweet harmonies on ‘Forgiveness’ and ‘No Need To Worry’ – “…no need to worry/ we’ll get some jewellery for your momma...". The leading light from 'All Hour Cymbals, the apocalyptic vision of '2080' takes a faux-African jungle tribal working with big bold drums and township jive riffs, the bands harmonies creating a euphoric moment that smites the four horses of the apocalypse with a begone, for maybe the Mayans have it right with their 2012 end-time prophecy after all, Chris’s motions ricocheting as he delivers “I can’t sleep when I think about the times we’re living in...”.
The flip-side to their forthcoming single finds 'Final Path' citing apocalyptic possibilities with the lines “…sky’s a-falling/ water’s a-rising…” to 70's/80’s electro-programming, whilst ‘Sunrise’ with its’ vocal sample intro, pounding drums and warm bass hooks confirms that Yeasayer are very much a jubilant and celebratory band. Closing with the broody 'Wait For The Wintertime' with an eagerness to dance, it's just a one hour slot that doesn't allow for an encore but leaves a hankering, with a waiting period until Yeasayer will be making a party-hopping return to the UKin May and a performance at ATP. Yeasayer will be biding their time until the world catches up, or runs out of steam. And Ira - what's with the outlaw 8 inch blade and sheath across the chest?
