Yeasayer
Erotic Reruns
Release Date: Jun 7, 2019
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Rock
Record label: N/A
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Album Review: Erotic Reruns by Yeasayer
Fairly Good, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 7/10
In a return to their earliest days as a band, Yeasayer's fifth album, Erotic Reruns, was written and produced by the core trio of Chris Keating, Ira Wolf Tuton, and Anand Wilder. It was even recorded in their respective home studios (along with a few guests and engineer Daniel Neiman). Streamlining arrangements and song structures more so than in the past, the album's pop-leaning blend of dance-funk and the softer side of classic album rock is their most accessible yet.
Based on rating 5.5/10
For a band that sounded so far out at the time, there was a lot of precedent for Yeasayer's eccentricities. With their first two albums, 2007's All Cymbals Hour and 2010's Odd Blood, the band charted a Venn Diagram of nearly every major indie rock trend of the era, shading their art rock with Animal Collective's hippie splatter, MGMT's burnt-out party psych, and TV on the Radio's dark plays on Peter Gabriel, while touching on R&B, African music, and just about anything else that was music-blogger catnip during those years. Did I mention they were from Brooklyn? Do I need to mention they were from Brooklyn? It was almost uncanny, Yeasayer's ability to embrace all the right sounds at exactly the right time, yet they pieced these styles together so inventively that they rarely came across as opportunistic.
Based on rating 5.5/10
Yeasayer have never allowed their sound to go stagnant, approaching each record almost as if it were an unrelated entity rather than a continuation of what's come before. This compulsive experimentation is one of the things that has kept Yeasayer so relevant more than a decade past their smash debut All Hours Cymbal. Each album since has been a surprise: occasionally divisive, but always bold.
Opinion: Very Good
Two years on from 2016's 'Amen & Goodbye', Brooklyn-hailing experimental rock trio Yeasayer are back with fifth album Erotic Reruns. For a band who have continually taken creative left turns - veering between sing-along psych-pop and moments of fuller indulgence in their avant-garde tendencies - this nine-song follow-up strikes a neat balance between the two. A return to a more DIY approach delivers plentiful psychedelic sounds and heady hooks, emanating joyful warmth in spite of a seething thread of cynicism amid troubling political times.
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