Inside, themes are scrawled across a dry erase board (“family ties”, “creepy stranger”). The song provisionally known as ‘English Anthem Hybrid’ (later ‘Madder Red’) has been devised with the UK festival crowds in mind. “We’ll see how that pans out with the flag-waving punter,” says Tuton. “Whether they’re singing that song right before they head-butt somebody.”

Yeasayer have always been this measured. Wilder began playing the violin at the age of two. At four came the cello and then formal training at music school. “I was a really determined little kid. It was pretty brutal. My grandmother remembers my dad saying: ‘I think he should just be playing with toys’. But I saw Yo-Yo Ma on Sesame Street and wanted to be like him.”

Though Tuton grew up wanting to be a truck driver, the musicians in his family proved he could aim higher. “When you grow up with pop music, you’re exposed to the characters, the stories and the lore. It’s insanely romantic and it’s hard as an impressionable kid not to get caught up in imagining it.”

Keating shared a similar infatuation. His mum had an extensive 45 collection; his dad was always blasting classic rock radio. He befriended Wilder during first grade in Baltimore and together they were in choirs, doo-wop groups and musicals. “We competed in the mid-Atlantic barbershop competition but we were disqualified for not being serious enough,” says Wilder. “We didn’t have bowties, top-hats and canes; we dressed up in gas-station uniforms and were called ‘The Dynamic Trio’ instead of whatever corny names the nerd quartets had.”

Years later when Keating called Wilder from New York, inviting him to play a show, Wilder was flabbergasted by people “shitting their pants” for vocal harmonies. He put his musical about coal miners on hiatus and packed up for Brooklyn. Wilder called in distant-cousin Tuton and before long they were making a splash at SXSW 2007, preaching about Enya and the end of the world.

Nearly 200 shows later, Yeasayer have gone from having a manager who believes in lizard people to being snapped up by shrewd labels and marketing muscle. Tuton went from installing lights in Kanye West’s house to being praised on his blog. But while the band see their debut, All Hour Cymbals, a hazy collection of roughly recorded psych-rock, as a fluke, its follow up shows just how seriously they’ve studied hit songs. Odd Blood is catchy but complicated, dance-worthy but disorientating. They’ve treated its production as a science, replicating the feel of tracks like Chaka Khan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody’ with academic precision.

“We’re very deliberate, intentional people,” Wilder admits. “I think there are formulas to making hit songs. You can have all the elements: a clear beat, a high vocal, a hook. But then there’s also this intangible element that you have to receive. If a computer were to write a hit song, it could only take it so far.”

Tuton, the group’s funny man, believes that pop’s biggest stars create their own formula out of different sources. “The act of making popular music is basically the act of ripping off that which came before you. We’re tactfully embracing that and trying to be extremely aware of all the sources available to us.”

Cue talk of Haddaway. Ace of Base. Phil Collins. Jesus Christ. Yeasayer openly gleam from the cheesy smash hits of the ‘80s and early ‘90s. But kitsch, they claim, doesn’t come into it. “Chris had this compilation of all those old club anthems,” Wilder explains. “They all hit a certain part, right before the beat drops, where you get so pumped up. [Mimics the synth hook for Haddaway’s ‘What Is Love?’] And if you break it down, basically there’s no difference between those songs and a classic rock song by Bob Seger or someone. It’s the same thing that just gets inside your brain like a mantra. There’s a reason for that Saturday Night Live skit [with Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell] – those guys can’t help but bounce their heads.” [sings Haddaway again]

Wilder’s in good form: bubbly, engaged and laughing off the fact that he’s been caught reading his own press [“I don’t know why this guy didn’t just edit me so I look a little bit smarter than I am.”]. That the band regularly change their image has drawn criticism – particularly for Wilder. He’s been reinventing his look since childhood. First there was his pre-pubescent Mohawk; a ponytail in adolescence (“it was actually a rat tail”); a mullet in college; then long hair. Today it’s a mop-top. “I’ve always taken my image seriously. It’s something I care about a lot. It’s funny because we’ve gotten so much bad press about it. ‘They may not look cool but they certainly are an eclectic bunch’. And it’s like, wait a second… We look way cooler than Arctic Monkeys!”

Wilder knows that, like fashion, pop is cyclical and that what’s fresh today can soon become passé. But Yeasayer have factored this into their calculations. “I think when artists become huge, they really define the collective social consciousness of that era. Then if in a year or two that seems cheesy, their careers go that way too. So if you don’t start out small and build a fan base, your support seems a mile high but it’s only an inch deep. It can be pulled out from under you.”

“Well the reason those one-hit-wonders’ careers didn’t go anywhere,” adds Tuton, “is because a lot of them were caught up in a system where they didn’t know how to evolve, so they tried to make that one hit over and over. And that’s not the way the world works. The world evolves and you as a writer and artist need to evolve. It’s a challenge to stay contemporary. I think that’s why the three of us get along, because we pressure each other to do that.”

[Anand: if you're reading this, we love ya.]

Originally published in The Stool Pigeon.

Beach House – Holy Dances

There’s a knock at the door. A German-sounding man in his fifties politely asks if Beach House would mind letting two crack-smoking sisters use their dressing room for a while. Tensions are high. It’s late 2007 and Baltimore’s dream-pop duo are topping a variety bill that has attracted only a handful of people to one of London’s smallest venues. For a little-known band, this does not feel like an auspicious beginning.

Fast forward a few years: there are more albums, more scars, a different sound and a different outlook. Victoria Legrand even has some words of advice to give her old self, if she could. “I’d say: ‘things are going to happen that you won’t want or expect, but it’s for the better. It’s going to allow you to make room for the more important things in your life. So chill out’. But I always say that to myself now too. I say, ‘Victoria, you just need to take it easy and stop being so neurotic’.”

Legrand is sitting in the passenger seat of an old Toyota parked within a gated community in Towson, just outside Baltimore. It’s cold. She bites her words at first, but it doesn’t take her long to warm. She knows how to steam up those windows. For the last year, Legrand and Alex Scally have put everything into making Teen Dream – an album already tipped for 2010’s best-of lists. There is no personal life anymore, she says. Just Beach House. The day job is long gone. “I would bartend during the day and usually someone would come in and tell me way too much information. But you give them back energy because you don’t want them to go and kill themselves. I don’t really miss that.”

She has trouble remembering what year it is, having spent just one month out of the last 12 at home, and relationships have suffered. “We were forced to let things go. If you have a loved one, it’s hard to say goodbye. But it’s okay, you know? You grow and you change. I feel like we’re slightly different people now. Our obsessions are more intense. We’re both really high-speed people in so many ways. Mentally overactive and at our worst, dissatisfied. It’s like trying to stay calm in a hurricane. So a lot of silly things just filter away, but it’s all been very natural. You can’t have everything in life.”

As much as 2010 is expected to be a breakthrough year for Beach House, the pair have routinely maintained that this is just the beginning. And of course, you would too. But what if this is their peak? What if, in 15 years time, Beach House find themselves playing Teen Dream as part of ATP’s Don’t Look Back series?

“You can’t control what happens to you in life,” she says. “It’s like when you get on a plane and you go, ‘have I had a good life up until this moment?’ So if the plane goes down, you know you have. That’s very much how I feel. All the work I’ve done up until this record, I’m proud of. And it’s been difficult. Some of it you doubt, some of it you’re happy with. But you believe in it all. So as long as you keep having those feelings, I’m not fearful of what will happen. But it’s an interesting place to be: to realise that a moment in your life is the best moment. It doesn’t have to be depressing or embarrassing or humiliating. That’s just how life is. It’s brutally honest.”

Legrand, now 28, moved to Baltimore on a whim after becoming disillusioned with acting. Born in Paris to the brother of French composer Michel Legrand, she grew up between Maryland and Philadelphia before returning to Paris to study theatre at the International School of Jacques Lecoq. After meeting Scally through a mutual friend, the two decided to combine her classically-trained piano and operatic singing with his still-fledgling guitar playing. They spent the summer of 2005 holed up in a basement where intense writing sessions utilised the antiquated feel of their instruments: the rich tones of near-broken amps, old organs, a “strange archaic beat machine” and the sleepy drone of Scally’s slide guitar.

They still have the “same shitty instruments” and they’ve kept that simplicity intact. But just as Beach House have a fixed idea of what they want from the music, so too do the audience. Until now, the feedback has remained consistent: the same touchstone adjectives keep appearing. And maybe they’re right, Legrand admits. Even now, disrupting the template with more complex songwriting and production, certain things remain: the tension of infatuation and the pitfalls of love.

“We’re not melancholic people but I think there’s definitely a colour in our music that’s always there. Heartbreak, I think, comes when you just love uncontrollably, when you take risks. Some people get real into comfort and, sure, it is a form of love. It is. But then there’s dangerous love. ‘I’m not supposed to do this’ love. ‘I’m not supposed to love you’ love. ‘You’re the wrong person to love!’ But when you experience heartbreak, you come out the other side of it and you’re stronger. And the next love you experience will be more intense and even better. Because you allowed yourself to fall on your face and you gave yourself completely. In some ways being in Beach House is a similar feeling. You throw yourself wildly into something, very passionately. The rupture between that and a domestic life of nine to five, there’s a heartbreak that occurs. And, like love, sometimes it last years, sometimes it may come back to haunt you.”

Photo by katiew, licensed under Creative Commons

Toro Y Moi – Blessa

Chaz Bundick’s voicemail makes him sound like the Zodiac killer. It’s amusing at first, a stoner having a laugh, but downright creepy by the umpteenth time you‘ve heard it. When he finally picks up, hours later, Bundick asks what day it is and seems unsatisfied with the answer. He sounds nervous; leaving fumbling gaps between his words.

This may not sound like someone who has his act together, but Bundick is in the middle of releasing two albums, in different genres, within months of each other. He’s also juggling another band, a modelling career, work as a producer, and preparation for a 35-date tour. So far, the pressure is paying off: his ascent is such that footage of him just bouncing a balloon has warranted thousands of views on YouTube.

Bundick grew up in Columbia: a small, sprawling college town in South Carolina that Hootie and the Blowfish call home. His parents were music fanatics: mum insisted he learn the piano at age eight; dad made him listen to Sonic Youth and Elvis Costello. He gave up piano for the guitar at 12 and joined a punk band – the perfect escape from turning into a high-school jock.

“I started off in my freshman year playing football. Finally I got in for one game and it was a disaster. I was the small kid. I’m too small for anything. So when I joined a band, they said, ‘dude, you have to quit football so we can practice’. Thankfully, music was more fun.”

Toro y Moi, a title inspired by a family holiday, became the name of his bedroom side-project: collages of synth pop, cut-up beats and floating funk rhythms. As he pursued a career in graphic design, continuing to play with his friends in a band, Toro y Moi was consigned to hobby status. It was strictly a private outlet. Then, last summer, things changed overnight. Having spent years trying to get his band The Heist and the Accomplice noticed, Toro y Moi enjoyed a comparatively effortless breakthrough.

“I didn’t even mail a CD or a demo kit to a record label; I just sent out MP3s to a couple of music blogs. The intention was just for people to hear it… I wasn’t expecting it to snowball like it did.” Within a month, he signed to Carpark. Suddenly his songs, which are purely autobiographical, were out in the open. Hometown concerts became “awkward”. Singing about all his friends leaving town, for instance, wasn’t well-received by those who hadn’t gone anywhere. “I’ve also gotten a bit of heat from my ex-girlfriend/lover. A lot of family and friends know what the songs are about, so she’d be like, ‘why did you do that?’ Hopefully I can move on to a subject that doesn’t embarrass her.”

But it was the laidback, Dilla-like feel of what would become Causers of This that captivated everyone else. The ease with which Bundick can adapt his sound around any motif, be it covers of Michael Jackson or Beach House, sent music bloggers scrambling for new genre descriptions. They settled on ‘chillwave’, which seems to have stuck – at least until he drops an album of dreamy garage rock later this year.

“I can see why I’ve been lumped in with Washed Out and Neon Indian. We’re all solo artists coming from similar backgrounds of pop and electronic music. It’s not a bad thing for me, though. It’s fun to break out of the box that gets put on you.”

Though Bundick suspects his second album might turn people off, he’s serious about having separate “profiles” under the same name, even refusing to mix the material at live shows. The music won’t stagnate, he says, if he can keep on changing.

“The only thing I want from the future is the chance to put out albums. I’m not looking for financial gain or anything. So if the music world decides to turn on me, I’ll have a good time doing graphic design for a living. I’m just having fun doing this for myself, making songs I like to hear. That’s how it’s always been.”

Young Man – Just A Growin’

Young Man – Heart of Chambes (Beach House cover)

Young Man is 20-year-old Colin Caulfield, he of YouTube cover versions fame, previously praised by Bradford Cox for his take on Rainwater Cassette Exchange and featured here for his version of Grizzly Bear’s ‘While You Wait For The Others’. Well, since then Caulfield has been working on an EP entitled Boy in his Chicago bedroom and even has a gig lined up at one of my favourite venues, La Fleche D’Or in Paris, in two weeks. Hopefully more good stuff is still to come…

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Photo by <sïanaïs>, licensed under Creative Commons

Perfume Genius – Learning

Every time Chris Garneau attempts a lo-fi recording at home, a chill lends itself to the air and a faint lullaby-like sound can be heard interfering with the tape-deck. The more he strains to hear it, the more he’s convinced he’s captured an electronic voice phenomenon. What he doesn’t know is that his ghost has a name: Perfume Genius.

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Photo by kimama, licensed under Creative Commons

Jeans Wilder – Sea You

It’s a hazy summer evening; your friend takes a photo of you in a car park as the sun starts to dip behind buildings. As you drive home, this song creeps on the radio through some local frequency before slipping out into static. But the photo will trigger that melody in your head, every time, and that day will be remembered as one of the best.

Jeans Wilder is worth investigating purely for his mystical link to Best Coast; they split a limited edition 7″ together, which was released yesterday on Atelier Ciseaux.

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Photo byAmanda DeRosa, licensed under Creative Commons

Suckers – Easy Chairs

A rousing burst of pop to get the week off to a good start. Pretty hard not to sing along with this one; even harder not to imagine 2010 being a good year for this band. The Brooklyn group recently recorded a full-length record for Gigantic, but in the meantime you can buy this limited edition 7″ (or this one) and check out the Daytrotter session.

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Photo by audelising, licensed under Creative Commons

Natureboy – Heart to Fool

Natureboy is a lovely secret. And with sounds like this, a lot of people in New York may want to keep it that way.  Natureboy is mainly Sara Kermanshahi (who looks eerily like someone I used to know, but not really, who moved to Brooklyn years ago) with the occasional help of Cedar Apffel and Rory O’Connor from Masterface. Sharon Van Etten is a fan – and what better endorsement is there than that? Check out the self-titled album on iTunes, download a free concert here, or watch a live take of this track on a NYC rooftop below.

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Photo by ∞∞∞, licensed under Creative Commons

Golden Ages – Everything Will Be Alright

A perfect tune for a Friday night: upbeat, uplifting, with just the right mixture of electronics and melody. Golden Ages are from Philadelphia, they’re friends with Candy Claws, and their new album Tradition, which is released through Deerhaus, is worth checking out.

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Photo by audelising, licensed under Creative Commons