Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 10/03/08

No man can ever truly know a band until witnessing them in the flesh. This isn't cod philosophy, cooked-up in the music kitchen of life but simple and obvious fact. Consider The White Stripes without the comic strip fire of Jack and Meg in full thrash or Nick Cave's music minus the wild spectre of that tooth-pick thin shaman. Seeing such 3-D flair mandates and propels a fan's lustre. Otherwise we're day-dreaming a myth, a fake reality to fit the band's recordings and how they're projected on us through their look, actions and the media's manipulation of that.

Lesson over as we move onto actual practical evidence of this. Take Yeasayer, one of an invigorating collection of groups to emerge from Brooklyn as salvation from the fag-end of "nu-rave"'s genre fag-end. Naturally, any band from New York has an immediate dynamism and this four-piece are no different, as they jostle for position alongside the flushed likes of MGMT and Vampire Weekend for our love. The late 2007 import of their self-titled debut album showcased a sound buzzing with exotic, left-field ideas and, in dazzling debut single "2080", a questing, unusually conscious spirit.

As they walk onto the ICA stage for the second time in four days then, expectations are high for Yeasayer to write their names into the fabric of our lives. But very quickly there are problems, namely when we look around the stage and realise this unusually spiritual music - a faux-African psychedelic cauldron of eastern mantras, elevating chants and sprightly sonics - has actually been created by what appears to be Jim Carrey sporting an Abraham Lincoln beard, flanked by a Native American guitarist who, at one point, actually claps his hands in a rain-dance to the heavens, and a hairy, out of time, vested roadie on bass.

As the hooky groove of opener "Worms" gives way to its deep space outro and into "Waves", Yeasayer seem implausible, a feeling that lingers into "No Need To Worry", as frontman Chris Keating howls, curiously: "No need to worry, we'll get some jewellery for your mama." The singer is frequently problematic, whether he's excruciatingly fluffing his only audience address or the heavy seriousity of his keyboard playing, where every note implies stunned genius. As alarming is the band's compulsion to exhume toxic '80s pop, seen when "Tightrope" is preceded by the kind of echo-swamped drum fill last seen on "Miami Vice".

Yet such preoccupations with their make-up do a disservice to the clout of much of this music, which, at times, highlights them as exploratory cousins to fellow New Yorkers Animal Collective and TV On The Radio. "Wait For The Winter"'s resonating incantation, alongside the bold, ethnic stylings of "Sunrise" and "Red Caves", cannot fail to impress. But it's "2080" that tips the balance, as Keating, finally bringing his David Byrne impression to life, unloads some real vision and insight. "I can't sleep when I think about the times we're living in / I can't sleep when I think of the future I was born into", he sings, at a flash making it hard to dispute anything Yeasayer stand for.

by Ben Gilbert