After two years Yeasayer releases a new album, miles from their folksy debut.
Yeasayer debuted in 2007 with All Hour Cymbals, an album of tribal drum beats and genre-shifting vocal rhythms. Next came Odd Blood; a shift from their groovy debut, Odd Blood mixed pop and electronica. A two-year break and the world became fragrant.
Fragrant World is a completely new direction for Yeasayer, straying from their folksy roots into rattling electronic beats. This jarring contrast from their previous albums leads the listener to double-take. The album single “Henrietta” starts with a cruising downbeat interspersed with an echoing, oceanic keyboard, ending in a slow crescendo. Inspired by the book Henrietta Lacks, “Henrietta” encapsulates what Yeasayer is known for with melodic lyrics and psychedelic flare matched with the dance-floor tempo Fragrant World has adopted. Though Fragrant World is not of the same caliber as All Hour Cymbals or Odd Blood, it does hint to the future we can expect from Yeasayer.
“Reagan’s Skeleton” is an unabashedly synthesizer-heavy track, calling to mind LCD Soundsystem. While All Hour Cymbals gave Yeasayer the label of psychedelic folk rock, Odd Blood refocused their sound into synth-laden dance; Fragrant World follows Odd Blood’s lead. “Folk Hero Schtick” seems to ironize the band’s past. The haunting track, while still keeping with the upbeat tempo running throughout the album, manages to demonstrate Yeasayer’s ambition. They have not attempted to savour the high of their first great single “Sunrise”; instead, they have descended into the world of mixed electronics and phantasmal percussion. Called wholly unremarkable by critics, it will probably only have a few runs on the turntable before it is put back on the shelf. Fragrant World is a good album in itself, though maybe not for the lover of
All Hour Cymbals or for the dance floor guru of Odd Blood. It meekly hits the sweet spot in between the two.
