Live
< Yeasayer at ICA, London
words by Sam Little
The Roland sampler aside, Yeasayer’s instruments sport natural beech finishes. And Ira Wolf Tuton’s bass is even as serious as the musician’s name. It’s one of those fretless ones that you need to mean to play, or possess some kind of spiritual enlightenment in order for your fingers to be guided to the invisible notes. Luke Fasano’s drums were probably constructed from bamboo (only probably, because the cinematic lighting in the ICA prevents us from clearly confirming otherwise) or at least tribally booms as if they were in a Phil Collins, classic rock sense of the term. And it’s all very apt, all these natural materials peppering the stage, because Yeasayer are as organic a Moby guff. Seemingly sound-tracking the circle of life with their World Music, the Brooklyn four-piece put their ‘All Hour Cymbals’ album onto the live stage with grandeur. As all four members wail and howl in harmony everything heard tonight sounds ten times taller than it does on record. And the imagery the band conjures up is all the starker for it. We’re standing in a black box on the coldest day of the year but as ‘Wait For Summer’ (surely we’ve been waiting long enough!?) clops along we find ourselves on a Kenyan safari, bobbing along over sand bumps in our trusty jeep.
‘2080’ is a bigger, more positive hippy trip than we thought as the band speak of insomnia induced by the current state of affairs before professing how optimistic they feel that it’s the new year. It’s cosmic and reassuring in a way that Sigur Ros are, even if the Icelandic pioneers do present their life affirming progressive rock in a more understated way. It’d have everyone clasping each other’s faces and insisting, “we can do whatever we want in this muffed up world if we put our minds to it! WE ARE FREE”, if we weren’t all busy staring at that fretless bass (even when doused in water by singer Chris Keating, Wolf Tuton’s musicianship is something of a show-stealer ) or the ceiling, deep in our own trances.
Sounding most like their experimentally important local peers TV On The Radio when humping through ‘Sunrise’ Yeasayer have already done enough by the time the single drops late in the band’s set. It too is a huge moment of euphoric optimism and ambition that dwarfs how it sounds on record.
So, it’s safe to say that you need a Yeasayer ticket in you live gig scrapbook. I may not impress your old man like that Cream at the Albert Hall laminate, or the yoof like that Strokes at Heaven stub, but it will make you feel lighter on you feet, if only for a short while. We didn’t even know that we had demons to exorcise and yet we’ve skipped home like Dale Winton after his for colonic.
Originally appeared in volume 1, issue 30 of Loud & Quiet magazine
