An interview with Yeasayer

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Yesayers debut, All Hour Cymbals, topped many a Best Album list in 2007. Now, they’ve finally been able to take their wonderous noise to the vast reaches of the UK. We caught up with Anand Wilder to have a quick chat about the differences between the UK and US, their writing process and what they think about becoming famous through the power of the internet.

Hello! Welcome to the UK – hope the tour’s going ok so far. How you finding the crowds compared to the US? Are they more or less receptive?
It really depends from city to city, venue to venue, just like in the United States. The great thing about touring is that you can be pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm of a crowd in a place you might’ve assumed would be quite stuffy (like Mormon land Salt Lake City) or you can be crushed with disappointment at the lackluster reception of a place you expected to be a grand homecoming (L.A.)

We just played two U.K. shows, Glasgow and Manchester, and it was like night and day. I think the proportion of people in both crowds that were familiar with our music was probably about the same, yet the Glasgow crowd would be won over half way through a song they had never heard before, and would start hooting and hollering and dancing along with us. On the other hand, the Manchester crowd looked like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, not moving or dancing one bit. I kind of realized throughout the show that it was Sunday, people were probably limiting their booze intake and were probably still recovering from Saturday night out on the town. I like to give it my all during these kinds of shows though, really ham it up, try to win over the dead crowd with stage antics. Cause you really feel almost like your microphones must not be turned on or something, it’s such an unreactive audience. But usually it’s just your own paranoia, and it just comes down to different individual cities really just having different show temperaments. It’s actually quite fascinating the variety of responses we can get to our live show on a daily basis.

How did you approach writing your debut? Did you have the song written already or was a lot of it improvised in the studio?
All of the songs were already written before we went into the studio, except Wait for the Summer, which I wrote and recorded in our basement a month before we mixed the record. But the rest of the songs were written and demoed over the two year period from when we formed the band to when we finally went into a real studio to start recording the basic tracks for All Hour Cymbals.

How do you go about writing songs generally? Is it an individual process or does everyone contribute? Where do you find inspiration for your songs?
It really depends on the song, some songs are total collaborations, some are songs that an individual will demo at home and bring to the band for approval. We all definitely contribute to the arrangement and production of the songs for the live setting.

Did you struggle to capture your live performance in the studio?
Not really. We’re not some punk band trying to capture our crazy live energy onto tape. And generally I think that attempting to capture live energy on tape falls flat. I think Jimi Hendrix studio recordings are shit but his live show on Monterey Pop or Woodstock or whatever are mindmelting. We work the opposite way, we struggle to capture the studio sound in our live performance.

You describe your music as “Middle Eastern-psych-snap-gospel” with your tongue firmly in cheek, but how did you find your sound? Was it a conscious effort to sound different, did each of you bring something separate to the band as a whole?
That descriptor was a joke when we first made a myspace page, we’ve changed it since but people seem to have latched onto that one. We did consciously want to sound different, to combine genres in new and interesting ways. We didn’t want to be a retro revivalist band. We wanted to pull from old influences, but to try to make them sound new and exciting. We also wanted to draw from styles of music that weren’t necessarily hip or cool, like Musical Theater, New age music, film soundtrack music, or early 90′s pop. I think each of us brings something distinct to the live show, but it’s hard to say that about the record when some songs really were the brainchild of specific band members alone.

Your single “2080″ sounded, to me at least, like the bastard love child of Talk Talk and Tears for Fears. In fact I compared your album quite a bit to Talk Talk. Have you heard any of their music? If so, do you see a similarity between the both of you?
Yes I like Talk Talk, I’d like to get more of their stuff, right now I just own one album that I bought the last time we were in london, and after a trip to India and back home I think I misplaced it before I got a chance to burn it onto my hard drive. Tears for Fears is amazing on every level, I think they’re the Beatles of the 80′s.

Have you begun writing and/or recording the follow-up to ‘All Hour Cymbals’? If so, how’s it going?
Yes we have probably 15 to 20 germs of songs that we’ve started demoing in our home studios for possible inclusion on the next album. We’ve been touring so much that we haven’t had a chance to work on new material, and the one new song that we have been playing live is so ubiquitous that I think it would be a let down to put it on a full length so I hope we can put that out officially as a single as soon as possible. We hope to get into a studio in the fall and work with new engineers to breathe some new life into our sound.

Had the wide-spread critical adulation that’s accompanied your debut helped or hindered life for you? How do you feel about playing bigger venues and having to do more PR?!
I love it I just don’t want to be some NME flash in the pan one hit wonder, especially when that one hit never even earned me any cash! I think it’s great to be in the public consciousness, to have people halfway around the world singing along to a silly song that I wrote in my moldy basement in Brooklyn. I make music for other people to take enjoyment in, if I didn’t want that I’d just be masturbating at home in solitude on my 4-track. The constant touring can be stressful sometimes, especially if the venue hospitality is subpar, but I’ll take it any day over a soul sucking 9 to 5 job.

Do you have much artistic control over the cover art etc used for your releases? It feels like a perfect match – the convergence of different musical styles reflected in the hotch-potch of visuals.
Ha yes of course. That’s funny I never thought that it’d be possible not to have control over that, but I guess I take for granted that Chris is a really great designer as well as a fine musician. He does all of our art, and I like that their is some unity in the way we present ourselves aurally and visually, the collaged sound and images. I think our next album cycle will see a development in our aesthetic.

You seem to have been bundled you into the current NYC’s art-rock scene along with MGMT and Vampire Weekend. Do you feel you have much in common with these bands and that it’s fair to label you all the same?
No I think the great thing about all these bands is we’re not at all similar, except we’re all young, ambitious and nominally talented artists living New York, coming out with debut records around the same time, who aren’t afraid to wear sophistication and pop hooks on our sleeves. If I thought these bands were actually stylistically similar to us, I’d probably hate them or be in desperate competition with them. I think we all have our own individual strengths, and having toured with MGMT, pretty distinct audiences. If these audiences crossover, then that’s great, the more the merrier.

What do you make of the current trend of bands giving their music away for free on the internet (Radiohead, NIN etc). The ongoing digital revolution seems to have turned the industry on its head. Other artists we’ve spoken to recently seem to see it as a positive thing. What are your thoughts?
Yeah I see it as a positive thing. You look back in time before the internet and bands were getting dicked over by record companies, just look at the publishing deals the Beatles were forced into by Record company sharks, or the dismal failure of the Zombies. If the record companies crash and burn, the artists with integrity will be left standing. I love the idea that we’ve sold 15,000 records, but that means that probably twice as many people have burned our record or downloaded it. It’d be interesting to do a poll and find out an algorithm to figure out how many people have actually heard your stuff. And for me, that’s the ultimate goal, to reach as many people with my music as possible. If I wanted to make money, I’d become an investment banker.

I think the whole Radiohead thing is somewhat of a farce, because they’re such a huge band, that worked in the big record company system for years, so they only now have the luxury of doing things themselves. And don’t be fooled that Radiohead doesn’t have all the standard publicity and distribution machines working with them. Jonny Greenwood is not running the website and checking myspace every day I guarantee. On the other hand, a lot of new bands do do everything themselves, and hope to harness the power of myspace and the internet to win them success, which is certainly possible, but still unlikely. A lot of people like to say that we broke during SXSW last year, which is total revisionist history; we went on two tours after SXSW that were miserably attended, despite all the blog love we were getting. It wasn’t until our album was released, in a fairly traditional Indie way, that we started to get real attention and attendance at our shows.

I’m glad we’re not doing everything ourselves; we have a whole team of people supporting us, it’s just a lot smaller operation, so we can maintain total control over the direction of our project, and have personal relationships with the people that are working for us. Big record companies don’t care about artist development, and will drop you as soon as you don’t sell as many records as they thought you would, even though it’s probably their own damn fault for fucking up the promotional side.

Do you think the internet has helped increase the bands awareness? Do you welcome this new “blog” culture of music promotion?
Yes it’s a great way of democratizing the publicity process, and bands are judged solely on the merit of the product that is circulating out there in internet land. But I still think it’s just an additional facet to traditional modes of publicizing your music, playing live, getting in magazines, newspapers and tv. It hasn’t yet replaced those old vehicles, it’s just a new one added to the pot.

What are you most looking forward to doing this year? Do you have many festival appearances planned?
Probably the ATP festival is the most exciting for us. I’m also excited to play places that are as of yet unscheduled, Southern Europe, Italy, Greece, or wherever. I can’t wait to play Japan or Australia, I hope that will happen soon!

And finally, what books, films and albums have you been reading, watching and listening to? Anything to recommend?

We’ve been listening to Brian Eno, Devo, Nick Cave, Dead Can Dance, John Maus, Calvin Harris in the van. We’ve been watching This is England, Narc, Serpico, Forrest Gump in the van, but I’ve also really loved There Will Be Blood, which I got to see for a second time when we were in Montreal. And Luke’s been reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I’ve been still reading that same book Break Through that I ignorantly discussed for a Pitchfork Interview three months ago when I’d read only ten pages! I will finish soon I promise!

Read our review of the rather marvellous All Hour Cymbals here.