It was good and hot on this June 3 afternoon when Yeasayer stopped by our studio for this very session. They had no trouble getting here promptly having mildly irritated their manager and booking agent by walking out on a show the night before because it was a shitty situation. The bartenders didn’t realize there was even a show that night and if they played, they would be playing to a room of zero. They decided to not even load in, cut their losses and come to us – an activity they wanted to do more anyway. Everyone won except for that one poor city unwitting of the scheduled show, featuring this Brooklyn band that would have shook it awake and rattled its fillings. They were politely sitting on the outdoor patio of the pizza parlor where we’ve begun eating one out of every three meals. The patio is really just a fancy way of describing the sidewalk outfitted with cheap, white plastic lawn furniture and umbrellas, enough to scare up some walk-ins on gorgeous days for mid-afternoon brewskis. The sampler of completed songs that we’d heard prior to them arriving doesn’t do them justice as they need to be Experienced with a capital E. They need a marinating, a way to form fit to whatever you’re wearing for clothing and for deodorant. They can coat you with their bizarre passions of clanging and snips and snaps all over the place that weld together huge worldly ideas that couldn’t have come from anywhere but a human heart. Then again, it’s not human, but the finest conveyance of the sick and confusing world that awaits outside all of our windows. It’s a connection to all of the fires and collisions. We bonded over “Entourage” when the smoke cleared. – Sean Moeller

First song
Wait for the Summer (Yeasayer) [5.18MB] [7340 downloads]


– original version appears on the forthcoming All Hour Cymbals
This song was an instrumental section for a piece of music we made for a fashion show in New York City last year. We liked the parts so much that we added lyrics to it bit by bit, with the theme of murder in mind. The first half is a bit dark and serious, but the second half lightens up, and the murderous character turns out to be a drunken fool. The live version of “Wait for the Summer” really is a pure drinking song, with a lot of breakdowns, stops and starts, where all the instruments cut out so every old geezer at the bar can be heard clapping and shouting out the choruses.

Second song
2080 (Yeasayer) [5.33MB] [6343 downloads]


– original version appears on the forthcoming All Hour Cymbals

We wanted the intro to sound like crickets being put into a state of the art woodchipper. The idea of creating a sound that is beautiful but also ominous became an overarching concept for the track. We’d been playing around for a while with a riff that Ira wrote and had turned it into this kind of futurist-spoken word Mapfumo crescendo. We all took turns just singing made up melodies, chants, and making noise over one of the early demo recordings and the song began to take on an otherworldly quality. After adding layers of synths, clarinet, percussion and playing with pitch and speed we came to a sound and concept that was both dystopian and hopeful.

Third song Final Path (Yeasayer) [3.65MB] [6222 downloads]


– unreleased This is our dance party on the eve of the armageddon. I think this one was written just after the 2004 elections so we were kind of sure the end of the world was nigh.

Fourth song
Sunrise (Yeasayer) [4.20MB] [5773 downloads]


– original version appears on the forthcoming All Hour Cymbals
For this one the drums needed to be the main focus. I wanted there to be a step team dance to this one. There must be 10 different recordings of the beat for this song. We made a few beats on the sampler and finally came up with one that had the right feel. Luke then played live drums to mimic the sequence and we chopped up his live drumming after we brought it home from the studio to make it sound more clipped. We also thought that we should walk the fine line between good and bad taste an incorporate a bass solo. A big part of our process is not being afraid to try things that might at first seem like corny ideas.