Lyrically, where Odd Blood focussed discernibly on a vivifying joie de vivre (love, infatuation – at times unrequited – and an infallible hope forming its verbal praxis most prominent) Fragrant World meanwhile witnesses the divergence of the troupe's attentions as they instead pontificate about the ineluctable conclusion to all vivacity. Thematically therefore, it's something of an existential exercise as they probe and prod our fascinated, and with it interminable scrutinising of human impermanence; of mortality itself and the record becomes increasingly morbid as it ages. Dance with the haunting fluoro-flounce of Reagan's Skeleton or skulk down the segueing mood swinger Demon Road for conclusive proof of such proclivity for the introspective, lyrics of "all hell" breaking loose slathered atop major key folly on the latter in a most discombobulating manner.
Nonetheless Fragrant World is no Odd Blood. Doubtless to replicate would never have revitalised as this one does, even if it may lack the acute pop precisions of its predecessor. Those tribal choruses the size of temples erected amidst remote forestry only to be swiftly unremembered. The maddeningly infectious ecstasy of it all. However the trio have aged personally; collectively; artistically, even humanly perhaps as, I'd conceive, have we all. And irrefutably there's still a most definite time and a place for Yeasayer: Longevity fizzles with the finest synthetic strings the respectable side of Ian Brown solo album; Ira Wolf Tuton's thunderous strikes of lightning-like bass predominate the hunky throb of Henrietta; No Bones brutalises with splintered rhythms and pulverising screeches. Thus similarities are there for the detecting although striving for comparison is about as futile as that between, say, Sharon Van Etten and St. Vincent. Both superb beyond cogent articulation, their respective and indisputable skills feel akin in genius to both recordings in question, though Yeasayer's true aptitude is for the wonky; for the inexpressibly idiosyncratic.
For musically, that which sets Yeasayer apart is their supremely adroit subverting of tradition: since furnishing us with the ethnic hems, fringes and peculiarities of All Hour Cymbals these adopted Brooklynites have been formulating a reputation as a world music act. Such is their polychromatic and musically multifarious artistry. However where this unfathomably vast, varied and therefore somewhat ineffectual genre categorisation may tend to be entrenched in all things past – historical and at times even antiquated, its innumerable architects exhibiting a propensity for the acknowledging and re-editing of the oeuvres of unnamed forefathers – Yeasayer fuse the sounds of their world (arguably a world which only they know) with their wholly stimulating envisioning of the future. And a significantly preferable future it feels too. For although there may lyrically be gloom inherent to Fragrant World, as far as the aural realm is concerned the world reeks of finer fragrance with these three trampling down its four corners. Ever impactive and becoming increasingly exceptional, it's a thrill to walk the same earth as they.
