Yeasayer
BRM has done it again. We've hunted down, captured and documented the most innovative and exciting artists to recently emerge on a number of different scenes. All month long we’ll be running interviews with our discoveries to help get you ready for what’s to come in 2010. But to get a complete look at our full list of emerging artists, check out our current winter issue.
Meetings on Brooklyn street corners are usually reserved for drug deals, but that’s exactly where my interview with Yeasayer started. Since singer Chris Keating was a little under the weather, Ira Wolf Tuton and Anand Wilder ended up taking me on a little walk through Williamsburg, complete with the delicacy that is scrapple and musical interludes. You’d be surprised by how much Broadway knowledge these guys have. Don’t believe me? I’ve got the audio to prove it.
Their sophomore album, Odd Blood (out February 9th on Secretly Canadian), still wasn’t due out for a few months and the guys felt like they were in purgatory. “We’re just waiting for it to leak,” Tuton joked. which it did, nearly two months before its actual release. The band even responded tweeting, "Presents are always spoiled for those who open them before they are supposed to."
Yeasayer is constantly trying to respond to trends, while still trying to make something timeless. Not an easy line to toe. The band was toying with the question: Will Odd Blood still be relevant in February?
“ I’d much rather be a band that was so well known that you could put it out the day after it was mastered and everyone would know about it,” says Wilder.
Unfortunately, Yeasayer isn’t really in the position to do that. Or at least not yet. The Brooklyn trio is not a platinum selling band, but with all the blog love they’ve been getting since their first single, “2080” they’ve got themselves a fan base. Of course blog love is fickle, and these guys aren’t interested in being some sort of niche band. Instead they have some larger aspirations, like becoming the biggest band in the world or, at the least, reaching more people than last time.
When we first sat down for breakfast, the guys were more interested in asking me a few questions. Anand was most interested in knowing what Beyond Race stands for. “You cover black people as much as white people?” He eventually came to the conclusion that Beyond Race covers all people including “others,” which is the category he would fall under.
“I’ll handle Heeb. You’ve got Beyond Race,” Ira joked.
After spending a good ten minutes or so talking about 30 Rock, agreeing that Oprah was much funnier than Jerry Seinfeld and Donaghy’s assistant, Jonathan, is hilarious, we got into the serious stuff like their new album, left field songs and Beyoncé. Unfortunately the jury’s still out on whether girls really like bass.
Beyond Race: When you’re listening to Odd Blood now, are there things that you’re like, “Damn, I wish I changed that”?
Ira Wolf Tuton: We did that for a little bit. We had the luxury of having a little bit of time before we finished the album. We got these two new members, so we got practicing a lot and we worked on a couple of different songs and they helped us rearrange things for the album. Part of the live thing, is revision. So I guess our approach is nothing’s ever done, but with the recording it has to be.
Well now that you’re in interview mode, people are asking you very specific questions about the songs. Is too early to have any hindsight or have you had enough separation?
Ira: We’re musicians. We have huge egos. We love talking about ourselves.
Not everyone wants to admit that. They pretend that they don’t want to talk about themselves.
Ira: Like we’re regular people? Yeah, right.
Anand: I will admit I listen to it now, I can’t think of anything specific really that I’d change about it. I feel like the songs are pretty much realized to their best [or] as good as those songs could be. It’s more of like insecurity, like maybe that song just sucks in general.
Did you feel that way after making your first album, All Hour Cymbals?
Anand: The other one, we had so much less time. There was so much specific stuff that I was like, “Oh, why can’t you hear the vocal there? Why can’t you hear the guitar?”
Ira: So much less time, less know how, less equipment, just less resources around the whole spectrum. You’d be in a club…and one of our songs would come on, “Mm Mmmw Mwww.” Why does that sound so shitty? Oh right, it’s ethereal. (laughs)
Anand: Anybody can make a hi-fi record now, if you own Pro Tools and like a good microphone, you know? I think we’re leaving ourselves open for people to sort of smack us back down.
Do you guys read reviews?
Anand: I think I need to read reviews just so that I know people are paying attention to me. But I think I probably shouldn’t.
Ira: My father reads them. My father tells me where I’m touring. Like, “Vancouver, really? We’re going there. You sure? Thanks Dad.”
Is he on the Yeasayer payroll?
Ira: Pro bono.
Anand: When he starts to lose his mind he will think that he’s on staff saying things like, “My old job, working as an archivist for Yeasayer.” We never hired you, Dad!
You guys released “Ambling Alp” as the first single…
Ira: My dad told me. I didn’t even know the name of the song.
Why did you pick that song?
Ira: I think like organically [“Ambling Alp”] is a bridge, for ourselves and for those who are going to approach us from the last album, all 35 of them. (laughs) I feel like that song has a lot of the elements that we might have used on the first record and some new ones that we’re trying on the new one.
That song sort of reminds me of a ’80s theme song or something Oingo Boingo might make. Especially when it gets to the breakdown, it’s very triumphant.
Anand: I think that song was like a couple ideas that Ira had and then Chris wrote some words and then we kind of came together and wrote that bridge part together, a nice little break from the song.
You talked about bringing in new stuff for this album. What elements did you bring in?
Ira: The approach has been focusing on being precise, more pointed in our efforts, our messages, our arrangements. Being tighter and overall things being a little more cohesive in a pop format that I think totally translates to more people than last time. I think we operated under the assumption that people would see the last one as pop, but I feel like if people hear a six minute song they think automatically “That’s crazy, man.”
Were you surprised how “2080” caught on so quickly, especially in comparison to other songs off of All Hour Cymbals?
Anand: I’m not surprised that people liked “2080,” I’m just disappointed that they didn’t latch on to the rest of the album.
It seemed every blog jumped on the album…
Anand: The blog love has its limits. I mean I talked to my cousins at my family reunion and they’re like “That’s a great song!” But you never fucking bought my album, you never listened to anything else. You saw it on [Late Night With Conan O’Brien], that’s the song we played. It’s like you push certain songs and that’s what people are going to hear.
Ira: I think that’s the nature of the game too. For what it’s worth, we can try as much as we want… but at the end of the day people are going to go on iTunes and see that one song has 200 more sales then the other and they’re going to go to that one.
Anand: I assume it’s going to be the same for “Ambling Alp.” It’s like the first song we put out, it’s got all the blog love, it’s very catchy…it’s very immediate, it’s hooky, it’s very repetitive. I think it might be somewhat inconsistent with the next album being completely different then the last one at the same time [though] it’s different enough in the production value that people will notice that, which I’m happy about. But I think it would have been nice to put out something that was completely out of left field.
Is there a song that could have been the left field song?
Anand: Like the first song [“The Children”] on the album. At this point we’re still a really young band, hopefully we’ll be together for a long time, but, we’re still pandering to our publicist, or our manager or our record label. You have these pop songs, so it’s like that’s what you put out. It would be nice at some point if we could go, “You know what? This is what we really want to put out to represent us. If we get slammed, if people hate it, who cares.”
You guys did have a recording blog. Was that a way to have some control? 
Anand: I think maybe we aspired to be a web presence, but I think you know what, I’d rather retain a little bit of the mystery. I signed up for Twitter, but I don’t have that many brilliant thoughts during the day.
Everyone can blog or post or tweet about you. How do you keep the mystery in the music or your own life?
Anand: I don’t think anyone blogging knows what I look like. They’re not mobbing me on the street or anything. What I’m curious about is the prejudices of blogs. Like, if we were on a major label would all that blog love cease? We have a really good team behind us that is projecting this image…of being homegrown, organic, doing it all DIY… I feel like , if we were to say we signed to a major label. [The blogs would] be like, “Fuck them, they don’t need us anymore.” You’d have a lot of backlash and then you’re screwed…or [you’d] get really huge like MGMT.
It sounds like a dumb question, but do you want to be huge?
Anand: I want to be the biggest band in the world without compromising my art.
Do you think that’s possible?
Ira: Anything’s possible. Not to be cliché about it, but sure why not. To be a band that people want to go see live, you need to work your ass off.
Anand: You need to be young, sexy…
Ira: And have drug addictions. Drug addictions last for like a couple of years of fame, unless you die.
Anand: I think the goal is really to remain relevant, and hopefully be able to support yourself on it. But I mean, if the goal is not to reach as many people as possible, then I feel this is masturbation…or you’re just sticking with this one niche group of people and the whole idea is to make some kind of difference in the world at large. It’s like Kurt Cobain before he got all the drugs. He wanted to be the biggest band in the world. I think there’s also an ugly aspect of wanting fame…but I don’t think that’s really us. I think if that was us we’d be on Amazing Race or American Idol…that’s not who we are. We want to do music, which is kind of a pure thing to want to do.
The last album was described as “dark.” Do you think this one is more optimistic or are there more pop hooks that are causing people to hear this optimism?
Anand: Yeah, I think it’s more poppy hooks. I think it’s even darker than the last one and lyrically I think it’s kind of paranoid. With the new album, we were going for kind of sterile coldness to it. I sometimes wonder, do people want to listen to coldness?
Ira: It’s a little bit more personal.
Anand: But I don’t know, maybe the last one was really dark, it didn’t seem dark to me.
Ira: I didn’t realize how dark it was until everybody told us.
I don’t think the album’s cold, but I wouldn’t have guessed it was very personal, but I think that’s a good thing. I don’t think you want your lyrics out there for people to be like, “Oh that’s about his girlfriend.”
Anand: I think there’s certain connotation… if you’re strumming an acoustic guitar, it’s so personal. But if I’m singing about my girlfriend and it’s over an industrial beat, people are just like “Oh, it’s so dark. just like their world view.” I guess we tried to do a personal album but we just covered it up with a lot of bullshit and drums.
I would even say you have some dance songs on there. Do you agree, or is that insulting?
Ira: Some people don’t want to make pop music, some people think if you’re music sounds quote-unquote “produced,” whatever that means, that’s just the worst thing in the world, if it doesn’t sound shitty like it was made under your bed.
Anand: I think we were really influenced by the split personality of being in a band, where…part of you is this really pampered elite studio person, the other half is working your ass off around the world carrying amps and stuff like that when touring. We had this desire to make people dance and make people release when they come to spend money on your show. The recorded material is really an influence of what we wanted to sound like when we were playing it live. We wanted it to be a lot more rhythmic and a lot more dancey because as cheesy as a song is to you, a pop dance song, playing it over and over again, I think people listening go, ‘It’s a hook…I can sing along to it and I can dance no matter what.’
Ira: It’s seems horrible to play something that you can’t move to. More power to them, but that’s not me. I want to move and I want to see people move. I want to see people get into it. That’s the kind of shit that I like.
Like “O.N.E.” which is a song you can imagine being played at a dance party or is it O-N-E…
Anand: My friend was like if you put dots in there, then it’s O-N-E…
What is the acronym of O-N-E?
Anand: Well, it’s the first line of the song…
Ira: Thanks for listening. (laughs)
Anand: I kind of sing backwards… Did you see the video about the review of “Ambling Alp”? Where the guy is like, “Okay this is a really new, interesting direction for Yeasayer… it’s a new song”…every time he says “Ambling Alp”…it’s backwards. He’s like, “It’s a really cool direction…listen to the bass, it’s really amazing, it’s really tight, really nice rhythms there, if you’re listening to the bass, listen to the bass, a lot of people don’t pay attention to the bass, I’m a bass player… but listen to it.”
Ira: I’m glad he’s supportive… I’m always recognized by other bass players.
Are they the only people who are recognizing it?
Ira: Yeah… that’s enough.
Anand: That’s good. Bass players will recognize it, other people will just feel it.
Ira: That’s the thing, I played it so people would feel it.
Anand: Or go like this… “Ahh,ahh, too much, too busy.” (covering ears) I really think girls don’t like bass that much. I know I’m making a generalization, but I’ve met many girls who are like, “Why is it doing that buzzing in my chest?” And I’m like, “That’s sub…”
Ira: I think girls really like bass. It gets their rump shaking… Guys feel uncomfortable… Guys haven’t done it enough so they’re like, “This is my personal style of shaking my rump.”
Anand: Yeah, that’s a bad generalization. You don’t have to put that in, “Do girls even notice bass?”
Ira: I think they notice me.
You guys manage to throw a lot of stuff into each one of your songs, so what I want to know is, when do you know there is enough?
Anand: I think it’s sort of innate…you hear a song and think, “Oh, that’s incomplete. It needs some more there, it needs a transitional thing.”
Ira: We’re three filters for each other… bouncing off of each other of what needs more and what needs less.
Anand: If you can think of it, you might as well record it and add it. The way we thought about this album was sort of like shooting a film, where you get a lot of footage and then you use maybe only 10% of it or maybe it’s only 2%, whatever Stanley Kubrick’s ridiculous percentage is like maybe .3% or something. (laughs) So we were really willing to say, “Okay, let’s cut out this entire section to make it more coherent” and “Maybe we don’t need ten different layers of harmonium.” And then Ira will come back and be like, “No I do want the harmonium.” You just kind of go back and forth, push and pull, until you get something that everybody is relatively happy with. Including like a mixing engineer, who might say, “You know there’s no bass here. There’s no bottom there. This drum, that we thought sounded great, doesn’t sound as good in a professional studio.”
There are cohesive elements but each song seems to be its own entity. Do you think about how songs will fit together or is each song separate?
Anand: I don’t know if we were trying to make an album that was all that cohesive. I think it becomes cohesive because someone puts it in their CD player and it’s all mastered at the same volume. We want each song to be as distinct as possible. I can’t imagine being a reviewer, and listening to some records and [being] like, “Oh yeah, I know that song,” but you can’t really specifically say what the difference is necessarily, except maybe the lyrics.
Ira: Just like James Taylor. My mom loves James Taylor…he’s a great songwriter, but I just remember being young and being like, “I can’t handle this. All the songs sound the same. Put the Beatles on!” The Beatles always sound different. Driving up to Maine with my Mom, I had two choices. It was a 10 hour ride. It would either be a lot of James Taylor and Billy Joel. I fucking hate Billy Joel. You can only have so much Billy Joel before you’ve reached your limit. It’s like the Peruvian chicken place in my neighborhood. It’s like, “Oh, this is so good,” and then like one drumstick too many and the smell makes you want to puke.
Anand: It starts to taste like a diaper.
Ira: Yeah, that’s what Billy Joel is basically. You hear, “And we will all go down together” and you just want to fucking throw up. It was either that or Handel’s the Messiah, two times in a row because it’s five hours long. But I know that entire, is that an opera? What is that, the Messiah? It’s not a musical.
Anand: I think it’s an opera. Wait, it’s something else, because it’s not acted out. It’s a mass. What’s the song from that?
Ira: [sings] “And he shall reign forever and ever.” “Hallelujah,” I mean it’s fuckin’ hit after hit after hit. You can’t get tired of it.
Anand: [Starts singing “Hallelujah”] Yeah, that stuff’s gangsta. We should do that!
You guys sure are very knowledgeable about musicals…
Ira: Don’t just write we know a lot about musicals.
Anand: We know a lot about a lot of stuff.
Ira: Can that be the quote, “We know a lot about a lot of stuff”?
Anand: I said it because, that’s the opposite of what this friend of mine said. He makes very retro garage rock, really kind of one of those guys that listens to a lot of pre-war blues. A friend of mine went up to him and was like, “Hey, do you still keep up with Anand?” And he’s like, “No.” “Did you ever listen to his band Yeasayer?” “Yeah, you know, I don’t know about that. In fact I don’t know a lot about a lot, but I know a lot about a little.” So I know a lot about a lot.
Ira: I know a little about a lot. It’s good, I can make conversation.
Anand: The reason I say I know a lot, ask me anything and I can look it up in my iPhone and know about it.
Ira: I’m just basing it off of information I’ve retained in my life, on the amount of Trivial Pursuit I’ve played.
You played the Guggenheim, which is a weird place to play. How was that experience?
Ira: Being in a band for a living, you [are] kind of just given a lot of different opportunities and a lot of times we’ll be at a show…and like staring up at the ceiling and just thinking where we are and taking stock of that. [The Guggenheim] was just another time like that… a surreal experience I will remember. Just like the first time we played Norway in a black box and I looked up and there’s a few hundred people there and I’m like, “We’re in fucking Norway.”
Anand: Yeah, there’s something cool about playing there, and then there was also really bad elements to it. The sound was really horrible, and you know they’re not really catering to bands so if you wanted to bring a water bottle from the backstage to the front they wouldn’t let you.
Ira: Did you see that wall coming out of the wall in the auditorium?
Anand: Yeah, Ellsworth Kelly. You didn’t recognize the Ellsworth Kelly? (laughs)
Ira: So I’m walking by it and tapping on it and the dude flipped and was like, “Don’t touch that!” And I was like, “Oh sorry.” And he was like, “It’s art!”
Anand: The guy was like, “Everybody touches it.”
I know for the show you guys tried out some new lighting unleashing a few more orbs...
Anand: We unleashed about 10 more orbs.
Ira: Three people were killed.
Anand: We had ChromaDepth glasses that everyone was supposed to wear. I catered my costume for the night to people wearing ChromaDepth glasses but I don’t think people wore them. People were like, “That costume clashes,” instead of just putting on the glasses and realizing how cool I looked. I think to be honest the glasses made you a bit nauseous after a little bit.
Ira: Yeah man, I put them on for a couple of minutes and then took them off. It’s like putting on your prescription glasses, it made me all cross-eyed and I almost lost my balance.
Is stage design important to you?
Ira: Yeah, that’s part of the entertainment. I’m much more interested in going to see a production value of a Beyoncé show or something like that than seeing four sweaty dudes banging on guitars.
Anand: I know I don’t have the talent to sing and dance at the same time like Beyoncé.
Ira: Beyoncé is one of the greatest entertainers of our time. I don’t know how she can sing and dance the way she does.
Tina Turner sang and danced at the same time…
Ira: Yeah, Tina Turner, but Tina Turner sounded like she was moving when she danced which was kind of the part of the attraction, raw energy.
Anand: She didn’t have the talent and backing tracks, but now she could. And I would argue that Tina Turner is one of the best entertainers of her time.
Besides the new album and touring, what else are you looking forward to in 2010?
Anand: By the time this article comes out, Barack Obama would be in office for a year?
Ira: We’ll be competing with all those articles. I’ll be reading those instead.
Anand: We were hoping that “2080” would be his campaign song.
Ira: Now we just have to wait to the year 2080 to cash in on it. That’s the genius of writing pop songs you mention a car name, as long as that car company theoretically stays in business, or a year.
Anand: We should. We need to write a song about a Dodge Ram.
Ira: I’m working on it, “American Made, American Muscle.” Oh Jesus, don’t let that cat out of the bag. If it’s recorded and written does that automatically make it copywritten?
Anand: Yeah, it automatically dates it. “American Made, American Muscle” or “American Muscle, American Made”?
Ira: “American Made, American Muscle.” Because people will be like, “American made, yeah. American muscle, yeah!”
Do you know what this song will sound like?
Ira: (sings with a husky, manly voice) American made, American muscle. Insert whatever stock riff.
Anand: That’s good, let’s work on that this afternoon.
Do songs come that easily to you guys?
Ira: Oh man, we can write songs like that [snaps his finger]. We’re working on another one, a slew of songs to sell.
Any other products you’re trying to hawk?
Anand: We tried to write songs for what’s that Canadian band?
Ira: We wanted to write songs for Nickelback, but then we found out he’s like a really good songwriter. Their publishing company told us they write all their songs. But who am I to talk? He’s selling millions of records. But you know why? Canadian subsidies. Fuckin’ Canada. If they had not been subsidized by Canada for so long they would have broken up. We have to maintain these relationships without being subsidized.
Anand: And Canadian radio has to play, I think 50% Canadian music on the radio.
Maybe you need to move to Canada…
Anand: Actually I think with “Ambling Alp” we can tell who’s been buying the records and stuff and most of it is coming from Norway and Sweden.
Why do you think you are such a hit there?
Ira: They really latched onto that first album. I don’t really know much about that culture. We’ve been there four times. It’s a nice place to sell records. I love going there.
Anand: There are four million people there. There are about as many people in Norway as records.
Ira: Sell 40 records and you’re on the charts!
Words by Shannon Carlin
Photos by Nick Sethi
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