A Round of Sound

Deciding which albums I choose to review here on A Round of Sound is not necessarily an arbitrary process.  Rarely will I give a review to an album I don’t like, but I do save some negative reviews for those albums that I found more disappointing than horrible.  I’m usually not going to review a so-so album that really offers nothing spectacular to talk about.  There can be an amazing album that I won’t review because really whatever needs to be said about it has most likely already been said, and I can’t come up with anything new to say.  Basically, it’s all about talking points.  If an album speaks to me in a way that offers up some talking points, I’ll try to give it a review.  Trust me, with Yeasayer’s Odd Blood, there’s pleny to talk about.

Yeasayer first hit the scene with 2007’s excellent All Hour Cymbals, an album full of worldly influences ranging from African drum beats to a little bit middle eastern flare.  The first taste of what to expect on Yeasayer’s sophomore release came back last Fall when the band released lead single “Ambling Alp” which was an indication that Yeasayer was ready to release a pop album.  The Brooklyn based group’s first album drew poor man’s Animal Collective comparisons, and while it took AC 9 albums to venture into pop, Yeasayer decided to go ahead and take the plunge on Odd Blood.  The results, while mixed, are positive overall.

Sonically, Odd Blood is much bigger than All Hour Cymbals with a more polished production and “everything but the kitchen sink” songwriting techniques.  Opener “The Children” features distorted vocals with a driving back beat full of electronic manipulations to create enough intrigue that keeps the vocals from being distracting before giving way to the aforementioned “Ambling Alp” which is the album’s best song, perfectly combining the group’s world music style with their pop ambitions.  The couple songs that follow continue down this path but employ an unexpected twist with a bit of 80s style.  It works to near perfection, especially on the excellent “Madder Red” which probably hasn’t gotten released as a single to this point because of it’s songwriting similarity to “Ambling Alp” which opened the door for “O.N.E.” to be the latest single released from the disc.  By the time “O.N.E” closes out the front side of the record, Odd Blood has evolved almost into a dance album, and the second half of the disc only exemplifies this notion, especially on “Rome” whose intro immediately conjures up images of Christopher Walken dancing in that Fatboy Slim video.

It’s no stretch to say that Odd Blood is quite front-loaded, with the most memorable moments all coming in the first five songs.  It certainly has its missteps on side two especially with the five minute “Love Me Girl” which struggles to find an identity and comes across as a bit of a  jumbled mess and plainly just doesn’t do it for me.  With more upbeat songs comes more uplifting lyrics so I suppose I’ll forgive some of the cheese found throughout the songs but hearing stuff like “Don’t give up on me, and I won’t give up on you” or “You’re stuck in my mind all the time” isn’t very creative and really isn’t saying much of anything.  Likewise, while catchy and easy to remember telling us to “Stick up for yourself, son” doesn’t really come across as inspiring as Yeasayer may have hoped.  So, it’s not all perfect, but then again the 2nd half of All Hour Cymbals wasn’t nearly as strong as the first, but overall it still ended up as a fine album.  All in all, Odd Blood can’t quite match the excellence of their debut as this one just doesn’t quite have that epic feel to it that All Hour Cymbals had, but there’s no doubt Yeasayer had a vision when they set out to create Odd Blood, and I think as a whole they accomplished those goals and pushed aside any notion of a possible sophomore slump, son.

[“Ambling Alp” – Odd Blood]