Customer Reviews

All Hour Cymbals

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You know, writing about music, for me, is usually easy, but I have been sitting here for fifteen minutes figuring out how I can describe Yeasayers first album "All Hour Cymbals" with no avail. If I wanted to sum them up in one word it would be experimental, which as a label always grabs my attention. If someone asked me to detail that, I would have to say they are best described in one breath as: spiritual/dreamy/atmospheric/experimental indie electronic/gospel/folk/pop/rock. Deciding how to describe their sound is difficult. However, enjoying the product of their eccentric-ness is easier than pressing play on my player.

The album starts off in dramatic fashion with "Sunshine," one of two songs released as a single. The other song being "2028," both are different beasts entirely as well as the best of show. "Sunshine" is a track that features Yeasayers at their dreamy best. The pounding drums, the clacking sticks, pianos, synths and eclectic-gospel "wooing" is a recipe for conjuring pure magic.

"2028," the other 'best of show' starts off with muffled pounding drums, followed shortly by another dreamy melody, this time by an electric guitar; and a lovely piano melody follows shortly after that. The vocals are stellar on this track.

The rest of the album is no slacker. There are other stand out tracks. "Wait For The Summer" is a good pop song. It starts off like a dreamy Beatles track with a kind of chanting vocals and what I can only guess is a seetar (an Indian string instrument). The synths on this one are great. "Germs" starts off quiet but picks up when the drum and accordion are introduced. From that moment, the song moves from atmospheric to hypnotizing. "Worms" is such a peaceful, relaxed track. The falsetto chorus of it is soothing. "Final Path" sounds a bit like an 80s goth rock song and is one of my personal favorites.

There are other songs worth mentioning. However, I will leave the rest for you to review. I merely offer a guiding hand, if you will, introducing this new entry into the world of indie experimentalism. Fans of The Arcade Fire, Menomena, experimentalism, later Animal Collective, The Cure, dreamy pop, The Twilight Sad and good sounds in general should heed my words and capitalize from the collection of this wonderful album.

I caught the Yeasayer live in DC and it was great show. I think the album definitely lives up to the live rendition.

How to classify? Difficult, but I would say smoothly transitioned "experimental", landscaped indie rock with a twinges of international influences (Persian comes to mind). I also hear progressive and 80s influences. Sometimes experimental is can be often awkward, but this album fuses different sounds and layers together brilliantly.

This album reminds me of The Earlies debut; however a bit more upbeat and less produced.

Very, very cool album and I would highly recommend.

Have you ever wanted to learn what it would be like to travel as a Bedouin Spice Trader? Well, Yeasayer's "All Hour Cymbals" won't help you do that but it'll FEEL like it is and isn't that what really matters most?

They use all kind of crazy instruments here to reproduce a sound that's predominantly middle-eastern and infinitely funky. I think my friend Gary said they sometimes use this kind of guitar that somebody sits on. Crazy. They also use these drums that sound like somebody's name...what was it? Roy-roy's? No. Bob-bob's? Nah. ..I got it: bongo's!

This album is one of the best of the year so far. Just like my first wife's decaying corpse, it refuses to be put away. I find myself craving it if I go more than a day without. It's alternatively cool and relaxing, then quick and pounding; mostly, it's a fast friend who makes such a big impact in such a short time that you openly wonder how you got along before their arrival.

Personal favorites: Sunrise (beat-heavy, notifies you of their arrival, gets you moving); Wait for the Wintertime (tremendously kinetic, epic adventure across a continent); 2080 (his plaintive voice is trying to tell a story but who's got time to listen?); Wait for the Summer (walking through the market); Worms (an old man tells you a story & belly dancers seduce you as you're robbed - wake up!!).

Great for hoedowns and cataclysms.

There is no question about it. I am a huge Radiohead fun and was expecting the new album with great anticipation. Nevertheless more than a month after its release I find myself listening to "All Hour Cymbals" repeatedly instead of "In Rainbows". The same with Arcade's Fire "Neon Album" which I also had at the top of my list for 2007. The same with the LCD Soundystem album and the Nationals's album, other strong contenders. Nothing compares to this album. It is new, unique, strange, classy, mysterious, melodic. Definitely album of the year for me.

this album is totally cool. yeasayer before they got more electronic. more middle eastern sound on some of the tracks. great bass lines. in my opinion better than odd blood. my facority tracks are wait for the summer, sunrise, 2080, and red cave. listen

Hey, remember the days when albums gave birth to singles and not vice versa? Let alone, when musicians gathered all their wits and created cohesive albums, albums with concept, albums like a journey? I don't know, The Beatles' White Album comes to mind where the songs are interwoven and placed carefully and deliberately in between, before and after and you start thinking about transitions, you look back at it as a collective experience. Like others have mentioned, there is no way to categorize Yeasayer. I'd say that each member of the band adds their own magic touch to the tracks and their diverse experiences collide (positively of course). I wouldn't say there is a frontman because each of them plays a pivotal role...and this joy of music making, of togetherness resonates in the album and definitely on stage. A must-see live; you'll never leave a concert feeling so good, so inspired. I suppose the most appropriate categorization I've seen for this band is simply "world," because it is humble, inspired, sometimes folky, definitely rhythmic, and there are elements of that~ somewhere on this dusty planet people don't have enough food and water but they sure as hell have music....I suppose that is how I'd summarize "world" and thus, Yeasayer.

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 Sergeant 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.

Honestly, this album is too much to put into words...to truly get what this album is like, you'd just have to listen to it for yourself. Everytime I listen to "Waiting For The Summer," I'm compelled to put everything that I'm doing down and just focus on the majestic beauty of the music. Listening to "Waiting For The Summer," "2080," and/or "Sunrise" in its entirety is the closest that any music will get you to a sense of nirvana.

These guys sound like Beatles meets Tinariwen, with vocals by Peter Gabriel in a phenomenal duo with Ravi Shankar. This being said, I just let you listen to them, and wait for your answer.

next hearing 2080 I *DID* fall out of it, and hit the ground.
The textured, Acid/Middle Eastern guitar attack that starts Wintertime, after the cleverly low key intro, reminds me a bit of the very early 'acid' SF sound, and the live Pink Floyd 'Ummagumma' version of 'Careful with that Axe, Eugene' (IMHO, DSOTM was their death knell-thought they were suddenly able to afford champagne, caviar, Rolls Royces, have butlers/maids with 100 hectare spreads with 30 bedroom mansions-while they write songs about how horrible it is to be famous multi-million dollar stadium filling rock stars...)
But back to YSs-Ive heard a THIRD track now that I love-such a rarity-now i have to go out and buy it.
My only quibble is, that I think there is some unintended engineering/mixing problems-fuzzy sound, riffs buried a bit too deep to hear-and I like the kids being given the closing verse on 2080-thought they are barely audible-but remixing and retakes cost money and this is a great indie start, -also, some lead guitar would differentiate some of the longer repetitive passages of WT.
All in all, hypnotic, uplifting music.