Review Summary: When electric rhythms and delicate vocals dominate, Odd Blood is an excellent effort. However, bloated musical ideas run amok, leading to just a good album rather than the superb pop release it could be.
Odd Blood is an abnormal listen. Its predecessor essentially sealed Yeasayer as being a more adept, more original, rock-based MGMT, and therefore
Odd Blood would need to be a superb record if Yeasayer was to avoid regression. All seemed well when the pre-release single, “Ambling Alp” gave listeners a fulfilling dose of crystal-clear pop. Shining constantly, this single is an amalgam of the best parts of
Odd Blood. Nostalgic, eighties-era UK synthpop runs amok. Beside it jogs a few vanguard tendencies, and above soars Chris Keating's high-pitched vocals. Combine these elements into one cohesive unit, and out comes a pop album that will make more than a few album-of-the-year lists. However, there are scores of palpable drawbacks.
First, for every good track, there's a horrendous alt-pop throwaway that hinders the album's overall result. Ideas relating to world music end up bloated. When any type of musical element tries to pull off these elements, the yuppie-era's worst components come together and meander irresolutely. “Rome” is obviously an ambitious effort, but the execution is poor. The outcome: A muddy track that tries to blend too many forms of aural exoticism for its own good. “Love Me Girl” follows the same path, only to wind up a discomforting effort. “Grizelda” and a few other ballads are uninteresting, forgettable efforts, and throughout the album the lyrical content of the album becomes painfully abhorrent. Lines like, “squeeze me till I can't breathe/I know she's lying/You know the feeling/Because neither one of us can know how long this love will last//So stay up in bed with me/Stay up and play with me all day and all night” throw any allegory out the window. These sort of lyrics are jocular and unfortunately numerous. Rather than litter the synthpop gems that are frequent on
Odd Blood, these lyrics hinder tracks like “Mondegreen” and “Love Me Girl.” This makes the record far less consistent, and the tracks that own these insufferable lyrics seem to have no saving grace. However, that is not to say the album follows suit.
Throughout this album, there is a successful pair of electronic rhythms and delicate vocals. Shown best on “Ambling Alp” and “I Remember” the two components seem to be incapable of failure. Every computerized glitch seems danceable rather than contrived, and the combination is always easy-going. Synth lines are smooth and poppy, and sometimes delve into David Byrne territory. However, nothing is overtly complex. Sure, each of these songs is more than enjoyable. In fact many of the tracks on
Odd Blood are excellent. Very few of them are downright innovative though. Some progressive influences save this album from falling ill to genericness, but the best tracks on this album are the least original. The most nauseating are the most innovative. With this problem, it seems that
Odd Blood is, and was from the start, destined to be a good record and nothing more. A large amount of potential is present, but very few things are done with it. Anything unexpected often fails. This leads
Odd Blood to be the sort of album it is, one that is on the periphery of great, but definitely not a poor effort.
