San Francisco – It’s not always easy to pick apart an album. Even those that seem more straightforward seem to guard some concealed meaning within the confines of the hour or so an artist or band is given to express themselves, but when given an album by a group that is so notoriously and deliciously abstract as Brooklyn’s Yeasayer, more attention must be paid. The band’s fourth LP, Amen & Goodbye, released April 1 via Mute Records, is the same sort of esoteric pop that we’ve come to expect from Yeasayer, with a few surprises thrown in for good measure.
Over the past several years, spanning three prior full-length releases, Yeasayer has been known for an arty blend of electronic sound and evocative vocals. Each LP has its own story to tell from a unique standpoint: Yeasayer’s debut All Hour Cymbals is drenched in Eastern meditation, 2010’s Odd Blood was the band’s experimental take on a dance album, and the release prior to Amen & Goodbye, 2012’s highly atmospheric Fragrant World took on Eno-esque landscapes of ambient electronica, highlighted by vocalist Chris Keating’s melancholic wails. Amen & Goodbye is a horse of a completely different color, as the band members dive headfirst into a more nuanced version of themselves; the title itself is a cryptic message all its own. One can’t help but wonder, is this Yeasayer’s psychedelic swan song? The content and the name of the album itself allude to such an approach, but in the grand tradition of Yeasayer’s short yet altogether mind-boggling catalog, we are simply left questioning.
The LP is bookended with short glimpses into the madness that is Yeasayer, the last being the title track, a spacey instrumental with futuristic laser sounds that lasts just over thirty seconds. At the front end, the ethereal “Daughters of Cain,” features heavily reverbed vocal harmonics that ask several questions of the listener, right off the bat, like “Are we the sons of sin / and the daughters of Cain / preparing for the flood from all the rain?” The trippy Beatles-like chorale continues over minimal synths, washing over the ear like an uneasy river, lulling the listener into a peaceful state for a couple of minutes before plunging into “I Am Chemistry,” the album’s monstrous lead single. “I Am Chemistry” launches the album into a fit of uncertainty, a jagged sonic landscape punctuated with a distorted hybrid of trippy, dissonant strings that coast over persistent percussion, whirling underneath Keating’s vocals, that are both off-putting and oddly soothing. On a lyrical level, we are made to think that we as conscious beings are toxic, made of the same compounds that common pesticides and natural venoms are comprised of. Keating’s vocals lean away from us as he reaches the first bridge, wailing “She doesn’t need my help / poisoning the well beneath the rue leaves,” before a barrage of synths piles on for the next few measures. Then, the kicker: a children’s choir comes in unexpectedly to deliver the second vocal bridge – “My mama told me not to fool with oleander / And never handle the deadly Quaker buttons again” – making another startling reference to poison, made even more irksome by the fact that it is sung by children. It’s reminiscent of The Decemberists song “The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!),” a track from the 2009 concept LP/folk opera The Hazards of Love, which depicts the ghosts of murdered children coming back to seek retribution from their killer by haunting him to madness. Yet somehow, this hits a little harder, because it isn’t placed within the context of a twisted fairy tale; these children sound like real ghosts warning us of actual danger. Perhaps it’s a commentary on the toxicity of humanity in regards to the life of our planet, or maybe it’s just to say that we all have elements ingrained within us that make us partly, naturally, evil. Either way, I’m uncomfortable, but nonetheless enchanted.
“I Am Chemistry” hits hard with the headiness right away, but it more or less ebbs away for the majority of the album’s remaining songs. The next song and second single, “Silly Me,” takes a much more direct approach, blending open acoustic guitar chords with new wave synths and a more playful vocal structure, as if to coax us back from the dark places we were just taken to with the preceding track. “Silly Me” is far from silly, as it explores the foolishness and self-loathing one feels when faced with a separation. Our narrator can’t help but feel that everything that went wrong was his fault, echoing the refrain of “Where’s my head? / I can’t believe now it’s over / She would be here if it wasn’t for / Silly me, silly me.” This song however also bears the overall feeling of departure the album emanates, and it could even be a commentary on the music industry, since some publications (I won’t say who) have continuously criticized the band and its music for being one-dimensional – which is totally bogus; Yeasayer makes some of the most influentially diverse and three-dimensional music I have ever heard.
Much of the album’s remaining tracks have Biblical undertones, often dealing with some sort of disappearance whose faults lie with the divine. When addressing the eerie, often troubling imagery of these songs, the instrumentation is often unnervingly placid, like the unmoving apathetic half-smile of a chronically depressed friend’s face, a mask worn in public to stave off the worrisome looks of outsiders. “Half Asleep” features a female-driven vocal section that coos and murmurs the refrain surrounding Keating’s heartfelt versed sentiments as “And yes sometimes I wake up / the company I’m keeping / the colors of my walls / I don’t recognize at all.” Some of their Eastern influence seeps in here in the arrangements, boasting sitar sections and relaxed percussion. These essences are also heard in songs like “Prophecy Gun” and the almost self-explanatory “Divine Simulacrum,” in which the subject of the song is unattainable and idolized in both her gifts and flaws.
Other songs on the album bend more towards Yeasayer’s signature style, namely “Gerson’s Whistle”— a requiem for the somewhat deluded 19th century psychiatrist Max Gerson — and the punchy “Dead Sea Scrolls” (another reference to loss based in religious fantasy), a true highlight of Amen & Goodbye, boasting vocal staccato, marked clapping, and bright, truncated horn tones, that give a neo-Western feel to the song, invoking aural images of The Cure’s Head on the Door sessions, with a technological upgrade. There are some pretty creepy interludes included as well – between thirty and sixty seconds in length – that give uneasy breaths to the album every few songs, adding to the altogether sinister nature of the LP.
Amen & Goodbye might be Yeasayer’s most ambitious album yet, which is not an easy thing to say considering the Brooklyn band continues to experiment with new styles, new sounds, and tricky content with each LP they release. With Amen & Goodbye, the band embraces both projection and introspection, a delicate balance that combines the outer world with inner turmoil. The religious backdrop against which the album is set is a fascinating move on the band’s part, as it sheds light on both sides of humanity – good vs. evil, dark vs. light, Heaven vs. Hell – yet refuses to take sides with either. It’s a viscous collection of songs that ooze over one another, making gray areas even grayer. The fact that the album’s title track comes at the end and makes no vocal statement is a statement in itself, for those who have not been raised on religion (like yours truly) often do not know the text of any prayer besides the “Amen” that comes at the end.
So is this Yeasayer’s farewell? I highly doubt it. There’s little evidence to back up that claim aside from the title, though I can’t say for sure. Part of me wants to believe that the messages presented here are too strong to be the band’s final words, but then again, last words are often lasting and powerful and come without warning. I still feel like Yeasayer has so much more to say – and hopefully will continue to speak in the coming years – but regardless of the band’s future intentions, the proverbial apple has been plucked from the tree. Amen & Goodbye may be the heralding of a new dawn, or it could be the betrayal we’ve truly needed, and just never had the guts to pray for.
Amen & Goodbye is available on iTunes via Mute Records. Yeasayer will be on tour in North America and Europe from May to July, including festival stops at Atlanta’s Shaky Beats and the Sasquatch Festival in Washington over Memorial Day Weekend. For more information and tour dates visit the Yeasayer Facebook page.
Corey Bell
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