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Product Description
Review
The concept album can be a dangerous format to contemplate. Push it too far and songs become nothing more than templates hungrily awaiting exposition. Weave the strings too loose, though, and your work can fall into a confusing mess of ideas.
YACHT has never been a band shy on concepts. From recording previous LP See Mystery Lights under the ghost-lit sky of Marfa, Texas to delivering their backing band under the suited guise of The Straight Gaze, core duo Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans know how well placed a tongue in cheek can be.
With Shangri-La they run their shimmering disco alongside the concept of Utopia, a narrator mapping the path between tracks. It's an ideology far closer to the origins of disco's message than it is a move to the obscure: a genre of music born out of the idea to unite everyone together on the dancefloor. YACHT simply work their kitsch lyrics and synthetic tones to translate this to modern-day comment.
Although none of this intellectualising really matters when you deliver an album that's so fun, pop, and polished. Shangri-La is full of wilful abandonment, from cheap twists to knowing words: "The Earth, the Earth, the Earth is on fire / We don't have no daughter, let the motherf***er burn" (Dystopia).
But while all this plays out, the songwriting and production hold such a strong and stable role that the album never really loses its course. The drums are crisp and metronomic, the synths slug and peak against each other, and the hooks are so sharp they defy even the hardest of hearts. The title-track is so annoying it remains lodged in the mind for a week after listening.
On Shangri-La YACHT have proven that no matter what the concept is, it always comes down to the music.
--Jen Long
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Sassy, smart and very infectious, Yacht's new album 'Shangri-La'
doesn't dissappoint. Their 2008 recording 'See Mystery Lights'
didn't either. It still gets played frequently in The Wolfcave.
There are ten songs in the set. Intelligent electronic pop of the
very highest calibre. Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans know how
to spin a good tune on top of some of the sharpest beats we've
heard since LCD Soundsystem's 'Sound Of Silver' (with which it
shares not a little kinship). The thematic concept of the project
need not preoccupy us unduly. With or without it the songs stand up
perfectly well on their own merit. Sharp and sparkly and memorable.
Look no further than 'Dystopia' for an incandescent example of what
it is possible to create when heart and mind and machines come
together with a common purpose. The insistent tribal rhythm and
sinuous harmonies support one of Ms Evans' finest vocal performances.
'I Walked Alone', too, is so catchy it should carry a government
health warning! (David Byrne might well have been smiling and waving
at Mr Bechtolt from the wings!) The angular guitar solo is a hoot!
'Beam Me Up', coming in to land at just over two minutes, is as mad
as a box of frogs! Yacht certainly know how to do droll-by-numbers.
It's hard to pick a winner when it's all so damned good but my money's
on 'Tripped and Fell In Love'. The chunky beat and deadpan vocals make a
whole lot of little wonders spring out of the simplest thematic elements.
(Mrs Wolf and I have devised an interesting set of dance moves to accompany
it which involves simultaneously slapping one's forehead and booty with our
front paws whilst gyrating in time in an approximately circular motion).
The title and final track 'Shangi-La' is a simply lovely invention; the kind
of sunny song with enough power to break through even the darkest rain clouds.
There are more than enough goodies here to keep us smiling until the next full moon.
Highly Recommended.
doesn't dissappoint. Their 2008 recording 'See Mystery Lights'
didn't either. It still gets played frequently in The Wolfcave.
There are ten songs in the set. Intelligent electronic pop of the
very highest calibre. Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans know how
to spin a good tune on top of some of the sharpest beats we've
heard since LCD Soundsystem's 'Sound Of Silver' (with which it
shares not a little kinship). The thematic concept of the project
need not preoccupy us unduly. With or without it the songs stand up
perfectly well on their own merit. Sharp and sparkly and memorable.
Look no further than 'Dystopia' for an incandescent example of what
it is possible to create when heart and mind and machines come
together with a common purpose. The insistent tribal rhythm and
sinuous harmonies support one of Ms Evans' finest vocal performances.
'I Walked Alone', too, is so catchy it should carry a government
health warning! (David Byrne might well have been smiling and waving
at Mr Bechtolt from the wings!) The angular guitar solo is a hoot!
'Beam Me Up', coming in to land at just over two minutes, is as mad
as a box of frogs! Yacht certainly know how to do droll-by-numbers.
It's hard to pick a winner when it's all so damned good but my money's
on 'Tripped and Fell In Love'. The chunky beat and deadpan vocals make a
whole lot of little wonders spring out of the simplest thematic elements.
(Mrs Wolf and I have devised an interesting set of dance moves to accompany
it which involves simultaneously slapping one's forehead and booty with our
front paws whilst gyrating in time in an approximately circular motion).
The title and final track 'Shangi-La' is a simply lovely invention; the kind
of sunny song with enough power to break through even the darkest rain clouds.
There are more than enough goodies here to keep us smiling until the next full moon.
Highly Recommended.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Bent dance music for the "whatever" generation
7 Nov 2011
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Bent dance music with a big, steady beat. You could sweat off pounds in an evening and never notice the weirdness of the lyrics that may tell an integrated story across tracks. Twisted melodies and dissonances offhandedly bring back Devo, Talking Heads, Blondie, and other early New Wavers, but with less playfulness or acid edge; let the bored dance it off. Machines maintain a relentless beat and the humans seem just to lean back into it absentmindedly. And yet it is an exhilarating set. Most tracks are strong. Strongest tracks below are labeled "S".
1. Utopia. Ukeleles on meth set the pace for a big beat that falls in with them. Tenor garage rockers join as electronica squiggles spice up the mix. High energy gives me the gitters. Or is it just a strobe light flashing on a field of bodies bouncing to the beat in the dark?
2. Dystopia (The earth is on fire S). Disco with a light reggae swagger. Big, steady beats. Spare synths. Vaguely Devo-like angularity and dissonance. Vocalist almost off-handedly muses about apocalypse. "The earth is on fire. We cut off the water. Let the motherf****r burn." Whatever.
3. I walked alone (S). Fine 1960s garage band attack with a snap in the sharp beat. But it's a spare, funky, synthesized cross of disco and Devo.
4. Love in the dark. Spooky simplicity in a tacky synthesized organ. Feels like early Talking Heads with a greasy slick of Blondie. Fine, slow, steady sway. "I love you like a ticking bomb.... I'd sell you out to get you in the dark."
5. One step. Funky geek beats--perfect early Talking Heads, complete with squirrely lead guitar lines.
6. Holy roller. Spare, oddly quiet machine disco with echo effects and artfully scattered fripperies. Then the band jazzes in for the big, steadily stomping chorus--"Don't you worry about God up above" and the vocalist drives into 1980s girl group tricks. Start over. And over.
7. Beam me up (S). Chugger eats up the highway. Female lead does her best chilly post-punk girl attack. Band charges in for verse 2. Souixie and sisters are back. Pure post-punk dance music.
8. Paradise engineering. Big, dark machine beat with contrasting riffs on three levels. The female lead commits Sprechtstimme in a 1980s girl voice--more like David Byrne or Patty Smith? "If you want me to be your God, yeah, I will be your God." Giddy and disturbing.
9. Tripped and fell in love. Fine, funky buzz on the big, snappy beat. Tight, sharp instrumental setting with echoes of Telstar in a organ line deep in the spare mix. Unusually balanced male-female duet. Fidgeting heat seen from a cool distance. "All my friends became my family."
10. Shangri-la. Opens with something approaching gay music box charm. The band picks up on it and carries it forward over a poppy synthesizer line. Happy, vacant, warm-breeze-addled: "I can go to heaven when we go to L.A.... Shangri-la, la-la-la, la-la-la-la." Music boxes tinkle away inside everybody's noggins as they march happily together to a hazy anthem.
1. Utopia. Ukeleles on meth set the pace for a big beat that falls in with them. Tenor garage rockers join as electronica squiggles spice up the mix. High energy gives me the gitters. Or is it just a strobe light flashing on a field of bodies bouncing to the beat in the dark?
2. Dystopia (The earth is on fire S). Disco with a light reggae swagger. Big, steady beats. Spare synths. Vaguely Devo-like angularity and dissonance. Vocalist almost off-handedly muses about apocalypse. "The earth is on fire. We cut off the water. Let the motherf****r burn." Whatever.
3. I walked alone (S). Fine 1960s garage band attack with a snap in the sharp beat. But it's a spare, funky, synthesized cross of disco and Devo.
4. Love in the dark. Spooky simplicity in a tacky synthesized organ. Feels like early Talking Heads with a greasy slick of Blondie. Fine, slow, steady sway. "I love you like a ticking bomb.... I'd sell you out to get you in the dark."
5. One step. Funky geek beats--perfect early Talking Heads, complete with squirrely lead guitar lines.
6. Holy roller. Spare, oddly quiet machine disco with echo effects and artfully scattered fripperies. Then the band jazzes in for the big, steadily stomping chorus--"Don't you worry about God up above" and the vocalist drives into 1980s girl group tricks. Start over. And over.
7. Beam me up (S). Chugger eats up the highway. Female lead does her best chilly post-punk girl attack. Band charges in for verse 2. Souixie and sisters are back. Pure post-punk dance music.
8. Paradise engineering. Big, dark machine beat with contrasting riffs on three levels. The female lead commits Sprechtstimme in a 1980s girl voice--more like David Byrne or Patty Smith? "If you want me to be your God, yeah, I will be your God." Giddy and disturbing.
9. Tripped and fell in love. Fine, funky buzz on the big, snappy beat. Tight, sharp instrumental setting with echoes of Telstar in a organ line deep in the spare mix. Unusually balanced male-female duet. Fidgeting heat seen from a cool distance. "All my friends became my family."
10. Shangri-la. Opens with something approaching gay music box charm. The band picks up on it and carries it forward over a poppy synthesizer line. Happy, vacant, warm-breeze-addled: "I can go to heaven when we go to L.A.... Shangri-la, la-la-la, la-la-la-la." Music boxes tinkle away inside everybody's noggins as they march happily together to a hazy anthem.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Get in Line!
20 Sep 2011
Format:Audio CD
This disc lasts the entire ride for my commute to work. It's miles beyond their last one. Here are fully fleshed out (good) pop songs. Not sure what it all means but I think the earth is gonna end and things are gonna burn. Eventually, anyway...
More please!
More please!
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