Yeasayer, Lydia Ainsworth
Recommended
Brooklyn band Yeasayer's 2007 debut All Hour Cymbals intersected with the zeitgeist at an improbable juncture. Its mixture of digital and acoustic instruments, its unflinching new-age mysticism, and its marriage of Eastern and Western musical tropes all worked together to make a slice of exotically ambitious pop. Their 2010 follow-up, Odd Blood, contained two big shiny brass-ring singles ("O.N.E." and "Ambling Alp"), but 2012's Fragrant World followed the irksome, then-current trend of deconstructing what would otherwise be unexceptional soul and dance tracks with truly horrid-sounding digital timbres. Their latest, Amen & Goodbye, isn't exactly a "return to form," then, but it exhibits Yeasayer's not-insignificant skill in crafting a catchy pop hook, which has always been their strongest selling point. While songs like "I Am Chemistry" and "Half Asleep" don't have the forward-looking fearlessness of All Hour Cymbals, they sound like Yeasayer have fully grown into themselves sound-wise. NED LANNAMANN