The nice thing about the new YACHT album is that it's pretty good. The downside is that there's a distinct lack of male vocals on the album. While singer Claire L. Evans is great fun, I don't think she's capable of carrying an entire album. While there is one song with a male vocalist (and whether that's Jona Bechtolt singing is not something I can parse) the rest all feature Evans front and center.

Evans is great fun on songs like "Dystopia", and great on this song, "Shangri-La", but she becomes very annoying on tracks like "One Step", which sounds like it's trying way too hard. (Alliteration is something you shouldn't try to do lyrically unless you've got an incredibly strong idea propping it up, and "One Step" hasn't a good idea anywhere near it.) When she gets shout-y on a song like "Beam Me Up" I mainly just want to smash my head through the wall screaming "Stop trying so fucking hard to sound clever!".

This is an album slightly ruined by not enough variety. While some songs off of it will blend in great on a mixtape, the album as a whole is ultimately tiresome and kind of forgettable. At the end of it I, and others I know in reality who are also fans of YACHT, are left asking: Where's Bechtolt, and why isn't he singing? The best songs off See Mystery Lights weren't sung by Evans. "Dystopia" is a great song, but the lyrical hook is stolen from nostalgia and the synth hook is basically "Dance Yrself Clean" and they should be ashamed of that, and there isn't a "Ring The Bell" anywhere to be found on this album.

I might sound like I'm being too down on the album. It's a fun listen. It just suffers from not being as good as what came before. It's better in some ways, like just listen to how clean and beautiful "Shangri-La" sounds, but overall I'm left wanting. Your mileage may vary, but I'll stick with my decision to mark this album as one you should pick clean for the songs you like and then forget about.