The fact that pop music is cyclical is no shock. But there's a big difference hearing bands like Wolfmother and Jet ape establishment acts like Led Zeppelin and AC/DC, and hearing Yeasayer unearth the seemingly dead-and-buried jams of Tears For Fears and Level 42. OK, to be fair, throw Odd Blood on quickly, and the TV On The Radio meets early Flaming Lips of opener "The Children" doesn't apply. And on a whole, the record does display the same skittish, polyrhythmic adventurousness of contemporaries like Animal Collective. Let the record play, though, and not everything sounds so modern. But there's something about Yeasayer that keeps calling me back to the big emotion, open-armed pop of the 1980s, especially via Chris Keating's clear-toned and warmly-expressed vocals.
For someone who's still very eager to pull out The Hurting whenever the urge arises, this isn't really a bad thing. For all of its embracing of 'cold' technology, the '80s were often about dramatic, populist emotional gestures. Yeasayer hit this notion up for all it's worth, with choruses proclaiming "Stick up for yourself, son/Never mind what anybody else done". Is it uplifting? Corny? The group simply plays their hand and lets you figure that out.
The same goes for highlights like "O.N.E." and "Love Me Girl". Sonically, these songs are natural results of a recent decade that saw an entire pack of NYC bands—from The Rapture and Yeah Yeah Yeahs to LCD Soundsystem and Liars—offer their own theses on the lasting musical impact of the '80s. But as the source of these influences shifts further from groups that were always pretty cool to those that have been treated like lepers for ages, it's little like seeing a friend you thought was dead dancing in front for your face.
Which is really just a way of saying that the method by which these songs are delivered is so loaded taste-wise, it can be a little distracting. One wonders whether a slightly less obvious tact on the part of some of the music would've yielded a more timeless, individual album. But there's a lot more to Odd Blood than kitschy neon geometric patterns and acid-washed jeans—if you can sidestep those elements, the joyous, inventive Odd Blood is yours to enjoy freely.