Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbals

Yeasayer – All Hour Cymbals

Music Review

The debut album from the band Yeasayer isn’t necessarily one that’s going to reach out and grab you right off the bat. Instead, you are more likely to find yourself humming a short refrain or repeating a couple of melodic lyrics and wondering where it came from. The music can seem almost overwhelming at moments, but is actually comprised of many simple parts all layered into a rich whole. The members use a lot of Eastern sounds, specifically reminiscent of Indian music, along with multiple vocal tracks and a dash of indie rock sensibilities. The result is something resembling a Bollywood soundtrack, a drum circle, Built to Spill, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Undoubtedly the strongest track on the album, “2080” may make a good litmus test for anyone unsure if that sounds like something they might enjoy. And that’s understandable. It’s a mixture of sounds that could fall apart at any stage of production. If the vocalists weren’t all good singers, if the percussionists weren’t solid, if the levels weren't mixed down just perfectly then any of the songs could quickly become grating, but track after track comes together nicely. They might not all get stuck in your head, but the worst thing you can say about any given song on All Hour Cymbals is that it’s a really nice song. For the best tracks, they've created songs that combine a sense of ancient history with new sounds.

Recommended tracks: Again, “2080” is the best song on the album. If you don’t like it, you likely won’t care for anything else here. "Sunrise" is another great track which allows the music to come more to the forefront. These two together represent the basic sounds of the album and, unsurprisingly, were the two chosen to be on the first single. “Wintertime” dips closer to the indie rock sounds, “Forgiveness” plays heavily with the chanting aspects, and the album comes to a nice close with “Red Cave”, which sums up what the group is doing very well.

Suitable for kids?: Sure. The music tends more towards calming and there was no noticeable cursing. Probably better for kids than pretty much anything on the radio actually.

Rating: 4/5

New Format!!

Welcome!

Whether you are a newcomer or an old friend, welcome to the beginning of the newest phase of my personal blog. It has been sitting here (in imaginary internet space) not getting used for a long time, so it’s something of a miracle that I even remembered I had it. Basically, I could never be bothered to write anything here because nothing ever really struck me as blog-worthy. Anything happening in my daily life was something I had already told to the people I wanted to know about it.

But I have always wanted to review stuff. Movies, books, comic books, music, TV shows… You name it, I want to tell someone my opinion on it. So, I finally decided that now was the time to just start.

My goal is to get at least three reviews up here every week, but it may go a little slower at first while I get the hang of it and try to get into the swing of writing these regularly. I intend to keep them all to about one page of text or less, so I don’t ramble too much. And just to let you know how my ratings will work, here’s a breakdown:

1/5 – Bad

2/5 – Not Good

3/5 – Good

4/5 – Very Good

5/5 – Great

So, anything with a 1/5 should just be avoided at all costs. Something I give 2/5 to is bad, but it could have been worse. Still, probably not worth your time. 3/5 will probably be the most common rating given out, because it denotes something sort of mediocre. Not great, but not terrible. There are likely things to enjoy in there, but they are obscured by problems throughout the piece. 4/5 is something you should definitely check out when you get the chance. It will be something that I feel very confident suggesting you experience, while 5/5 is not to be missed. There won’t be a lot of these, because frankly there isn’t that much out there that deserves it. But when they come along I’m going to throw them in there and you’ll want to run out and see or read or hear whatever it is as soon as you can.

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