I'm a big fan of theirs just 'cause I like bands that take risks, reimagine their songs for a live set and go for different sounds on all their albums. Yeasayer just happen to do all of those. While I still prefer their first two records, this is a solid piece of work with a late-Beatles-meets-Animal Collective type of sound. This is the quintessential "psychedelic" album- meaning that if you've ever struggled to understand what the term really means (because really, what DOES 60's Britpop have in common with Tame Impala?), this album really bridges those disparate definitions together. It's not a direction that I foresaw from Yeasayer, but perhaps that's what I like about it. It's not perfect- I agree with the reviewer that they were perhaps a bit self-conscious about remaining relevant, and the imbalance between the songs, I think, is a result of making half of the album to appease critics while the other half simply came from being strong creative personalities that couldn't hold back on their best, weirdest ideas. But I've always rejected that songs on an album need to sound similar to one another to be "cohesive." By that definition, NONE of the Beatles' albums post-Help! are cohesive. They're a band that challenges casual listeners and critics alike to expand their minds, and often walk away from festivals as favorites and a reputation as the "artist's artist," and because of that, I think history will be kinder to them than contemporary reviews.
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