SOLD OUT - Yeasayer live at Moth Club

DHP Family Proudly Presents:
Yeasayer
Live at MOTH CLUB
Thursday 22 August 2019

Tickets for this show are now sold out. 

“We were jokingly calling this our classic rock record at one point, referencing The Turtles or the Stones or Fleetwood Mac,” laughs Yeasayer’s Chris Keating while describing his band’s fifth LP, Erotic Reruns. But really, this is Yeasayer distilling all their strengths, while paring them to their essence. Intros are shortened, hooks are immediate, and its songs are concise, all the fat trimmed. This is an eminently danceable record that also encourages its audience to think, an attribute the band aren’t given enough credit for which they desperately deserve. Their societal and political commentary is erudite and trenchant. But ultimately, Erotic Reruns finds Keating, singer/multi-instrumentalist Anand Wilder, and bassist/singer Ira Wolf Tuton at an arresting peak creatively, their beguiling chemistry palpable throughout. 

Erotic Reruns is light years removed from the band’s 2007 opening volley, All Hour Cymbals, as they found their footing on their own terms, impervious to outside “scenes,” and the then ubiquitous DIY culture so prevalent in Brooklyn, with classic ‘00s singles “2080” and “Sunrise” foreshadowing the greatness the band would fully realize on Cymbals. Their artistic progression continued on 2010’s Odd Blood, with the fantastic trio of singles “O.N.E.,” “Ambling Alp,” and “Madder Red.” 2012’s Fragrant World, an album with a Kurtzweil-esque infatuation with technology, retained the band’s boogie down groove and innate pop instincts, with lattices of ’80s pop, ’60s baroque, and the halcyon days of cut-and-paste sampling added into their byzantine equation. 2016’s Joey Waronker produced Amen & Goodbye continued the overriding theme of technology colliding with sentience, as well as taking organized religion to task with glorious melodies wrapped up in trademark Yeasayer sounds. 

Erotic Reruns is like nothing they’ve done before, cutting to the bone marrow in its directness and brevity. It’s still easily recognizable as Yeasayer and yet enough of a departure to render it a bizarre entry in the band’s discography. The title alone says a great deal, explained by vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Anand Wilder as “Something happening over and over again. Reruns are never erotic. They’re always stale and tried and true. Anything erotic get cancelled or relegated to the dustbin. Keep it sleazy.” And in Yeasayer’s idiosyncratic world, this album full of “erotic reruns” captures the sleaze and grime so prevalent in our brave new world of surveillance and self-policing juxtaposed with tender moments that lend the album a humanistic warmth, flashbulb memories of love and loss recognizing the inherently ephemeral nature of existence. 

Erotic Reruns also marks a return to the band’s origins, taking total control and making the album themselves from the ground up (with assistance from engineer Daniel Neiman). It was produced by the three core members of the band, as a collective. In recent years, each member has built their own home studio, each specializing in a different area of recording/production that helped bring this album to life.