The Excitement Plan

Is Yeasayer’s Fragrant World this year’s secretly good album that everybody seems to hate? Or did I miss the memo announcing that this band sucks now? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought consensus on Yeasayer was that it was pretty decent band on the last album cycle for Odd Blood. That was the record that turned me around on Yeasayer anyway. When most of the rock press thought these guys were the bee’s knees at the time of All Hour Cymbals, I thought Yeasayer was a boring Animal Collective rip-off. But Odd Blood was like the Stone Temple Pilots version of Merriweather Post Pavilion, slightly dumbed down and super catchy. Fragrant World carries on in the same vein with a few “ambitious” flourishes—it is their Tiny Music … Music From The Vatican Gift Shop—only now the critical tide has suddenly (weirdly?) turned against them. I dunno, maybe Yeasayer was always lame. But this song is great no matter what anybody says.