It’s 2013 which means Apollo Sunshine hasn’t been around for about four years now, which sounds like a longer time than it feels. Perhaps that’s because, while the band might have left us, thankfully front man Sam Cohen has not. After the band’s split, Cohen took a two year hiatus before releasing The Color, the 2011 release under the name Yellowbirds. Now here we are in 2013 and it’s time for Cohen to remind us, and for his fans to remind him, that we haven’t abandoned each other. Yellowbirds (with Cohen leading the way but joined by now permanent band mates Brian Kantor, Annie Nero and Josh Kaufman) released its sophomore album, Songs From The Vanished Frontier, May 28 on Royal Potato Family.
Every song on Songs From The Vanished Frontier was written by Cohen on an acoustic guitar before it was brought to the studio to be filled out and recorded. This fact alone, and its obvious actualization in the album, makes each song feel all the more intimate. It doesn’t take too stretched of an imagination to hear even the more electric and bodied tracks, such as “Young Men of Promise” stripped down to Cohen and an acoustic guitar.
The guitar, however, isn’t the main focus. One of the most jarring things about the album is how in time and rhythm it is. Even during what feels like free-form guitar jams, there’s a perfect unison with the drums as if the percussion is there to remind the band that this isn’t Apollo Sunshine and simplicity of precision can be just as captivating as the surprise of explosion. This isn’t to say that experimentation in Songs From The Vanished Frontier was put on the back-burner. The upgrade in production studio from Yellowbirds’ last album has allowed Cohen to branch out knowing that the potential risks in filling out the songs would be backed by quality recording.
Songs From The Vanished Frontier has revealed the range of Cohen’s personalities. We hear the Cohen that produced Apollo Sunshine’s high-end alternative tracks in “Julian” and we hear the Cohen that invited us into his living room with The Color in “Love Stories.” We’re now also introduced to a Cohen who has stripped away any pretension of who we thought he was with the album as a whole. With this, Yellowbirds has created a personality defining album that sets a trajectory of where we can only hope this band has yet to go.
Songs From The Vanished Frontier is available now at Royal Potato Family
