Interview: Yeasayer
Everyone bought some dodgy cassettes when they were younger, right? The trick is to find a good shoebox, maintain the most selective of memories and under no circumstances to volunteer the information whilst interviewing sonically fascinating bands from Brooklyn. Yet here we are with one half of Yeasayer – guitarist Anand Wilder and drummer Luke Fasano – enthusisatically discussing the Ace of Base back catalogue. “The whole point is that anything you considered a guilty pleasure is just not guilty,” Luke contends. “Embrace it.”
Welcome to an afternoon with the most open-minded band in town. Together with Ira Wolf Tuton (Anand’s cousin) and Chris Keating, Yeasayer’s debut album All Hour Symbols arived late last year to sound like nothing else in 2007. The secret to their patented tribal pop? A complete lack of pretention and disregard for musical snobbery. “It’d be fake to be these New York hipsters who only listen to the Velvet Underground and Can,” Anand says. “Growing up, my mom would play The Beatles just as much as she’d play Celine Dion. Unless you’re really close-minded, you filter all those things and find something good that you can pour into your own music.”
That music is positively unique, melding together African rhythms, swooning harmony and group chanting. One reviewer laid it out in lay mans terms as the space between Arcade Fire and Animal Collective you didn’t know existed. A fair comparison? “Not our job,” says Luke with the look of someone who knows he’s stumped a journalist or two. “It’s pop music,” he continues reluctantly. “It just happens to be a lot of different pop music we like all ending up together.” Anand jumps in: “I always like to think of each song as being a combination of two very specific things that you would never think combine but make sense together when tied by good song writing and pop hooks.”
All Hour Symbols is an album that begs time and attention as a result, proving addictive multiple listening. When I offer that I’m still far from done with the record, Luke beams back “perfect”, and Anand jokes “You can’t get past song three (2080)…yeah, that’s the hit.” Luke puts it down to the scope of ideas. “It’s not just one musical idea. We’re pretty indulgent with ourselves. We put everything in. We want to have songs that have this bit from this guy in Iraq who does this crazy percussion or this Fleetwood Mac song or this Timbaaland beat.”
New Jersey born Luke completed the Yeasayer picture three years ago when he joined Philadelphian Ira and Baltimore high school friends Anand and Chris in Brooklyn. They love the borough. Anand describes it as “an artistic commune” while also recounting the tale of his introduction to the city. “After college I was working on a rock opera in Baltimore. Chris was doing his own thing and invited me up to do a show. It was really well received so I thought these guys in New York are suckers, I got to move up here. It’is ridiculous, throw these guys some vocal harmonies and people start shitting their pants.”
Harmony, it seems, is what drew the band together. They all grew up singing in church choirs, acapella groups and barbershop quartets (Luke’s family teamed up to perform for relatives). “Yeah it was all boy choirs, high school musicals,” says Anand. “I didn’t really do it in college though…” pausing before Luke completes his sentence “Because it’s lame.” That was indeed the case but the stale American college phenomenon of accapella groups singing popular covers, particularly ‘With or Without You’, was another reason to steer clear. “There was one group in my school who sang all Hindi songs and they were amazing,” recalls Anand. “But then at the end of the show they’d still say, ’You guys might know this number’ and they’d drop U2 in there.”
U2 covers will be kept to a minimum when Yeasayer’s captivating live show takes them through the US to Europe and back again for SXSW, where last year they had their “coming out party.” The UK jaunt will coincide with a single release of the re-recorded ‘Wait for the Summer’ and finally recorded ‘Final Path.’ “It’s for the British audience so it’s going to have to have a disco beat behind it, right?” says Anand. “We’re going to get the Klaxons to produce it.”
And seeing as they brought it up, one final word for Ace of Base. “Groundbreaking,” offers Luke. “I’m just waiting for someone to compare one of our songs to Ace of Base,” adds Anand. “It’s in there somewhere.”
