If you've been following my personal accounts on Buzz or Twitter, I've been talking about how I am absolutely addicted to Yeasayer's new album. I didn't care for their first one. I listened to it once and never felt like listening to it again. I thought 2080 was a good song, and included it on one of my mixtapes but I didn't care enough for any of it to post anything about it here. My main problem with it was that it struck me as boring (I hardly remember any of it) and the "world music" pastiche seemed incredibly insincere, like I was listening to a group of kids trying to emulate Peter Gabriel if Peter Gabriel was influenced strongly XTC, and they were failing horribly at it.

Luckily, Odd Blood strikes me very differently. This is a beautiful album. It covers such a broad range of emotions that it's hard for me not to get sucked in (and Pitchfork saying "Their lyrics may not say much of anything..." are way off base) because they cover a lot of things I've experienced simply in the last year or two.

Ambling Alp, the song everyone has probably heard and if you haven't then you should, with its inspirational father-to-son chorus ("You must stick up for yourself, son, never mind what anybody else done!") hits me right where it counts, because my father never bothered to say anything like this at all to me. I was never taught to stick up for myself. Whenever I did, I got in trouble at school, and then I got yelled at and scared by my parents. The one time my dad saw me getting picked on, he yelled at the kid himself, and when that kids father got in his face, he walked away without even trying to explain himself... which was the bigger thing to do, I realize, but at the time it just made me feel sad. "My dad's willing to stick up for me as long as he's doing it by shouting at someone a fourth of his age." What would my life had been like if I had a father that made me feel like I had no choice but to defend myself, and that walking away from your problems the second the going gets tough isn't actually the right solution?

Madder Red, about how it's hard to feel like you're worth loving when you feel like a spineless coward and what it is like to spend a lot of your time in a relationship wondering when your lover will tell you the truth that is so obvious to you: that you're not worth loving. I Remember is about remembering what it is like to be in stupid love with someone. O.N.E. communicates the feeling of being in denial about loving with someone you can't have anymore because you couldn't control yourself and had to be with other people and won't admit it could have been any other way. Love Me Girl, the other side of that situation, where you've damaged yourself by behaving so badly that you can't imagine the person you love isn't the same way you once were or are, destroying any chance you had at trusting them.

Supporting all these songs is music that is emotional and jaw-droppingly beautiful. Pitchfork, again, is way off the mark by saying these songs need editing, because they don't. If being lushly layered with instrumentation and effects in order to heighten the emotionality of a song is what they mean by "need editing" then, sure, I agree with them. Every song on this album is meant to be turned up loud, danced to, and allowed to fill you with joy. Maybe I am crazy, and maybe the fact that I am on my tenth listen in three days makes me seem a little fanatical, but I just can't get enough of this stuff. There is just so much going on that each listen reveals more layers that I missed the first time around. Is it overwhelming? No.

I am posting Rome, not even the best song on the album (and it has nothing to do with the rest of it, being basically "watch the fuck out 'cause I'm gonna fuck shit up" song), because it makes me want to dance more than any other song on the album. For some reason the rhythm of it reminds me of black girls dancing, specifically a loop of a couple of teenage black girls dancing that I saw on a screen behind Bobby Birdman during his live show. Rome makes me want to shake my shoulders back and forth, surging forward and jumping backward, leading with those possessed shoulders. I know nothing about dancing---I am just an awkward white guy after all with no natural rhythm of my own---but this song makes me want to stand up and make a fool of myself, even when I am here at work.

Instead, I'll probably just turn it up loudly at some point this weekend while I am home alone and dance by myself, alone in my room, because that is what self-conscious people do when no one else is around. Maybe that is the best compliment I can give Yeasayer's Odd Blood: it makes me want to dance around in my room like a teenage girl when no one is around.

Site Note: Yesterday when I said Ryan would be posting today I was lying.