Beam me up, down, all around
Imagine Fleetwood Mac jamming with Godsmack on the chant ending of "Voodoo," with the Incredible String Band joining in. Or Arcade Fire channeled through TV on the Radio and Gnarls Barkley. Or maybe Pink Floyd, Bright Eyes, and Talking Heads sitting in on a recording session for Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow" directed by Phil Spector with his "Wall of Sound." Welcome to Nuvo Psychedelia. Say "Yea"! On "All Hour Cymbals," the Yeasayers make shape-note hymns of the new millenium, especially those wondrous compositions about "Germs" and "Worms." Oh, and with sitars and tablas and buzz-drone, oh my! I love this CD.

Newly Classical
Have you ever wanted to learn what it would be like to travel as a Bedouin Spice Trader? Well, Yeasayer's "All Hour Cymbals" won't help you do that but it'll FEEL like it is and isn't that what really matters most?

They use all kind of crazy instruments here to reproduce a sound that's predominantly middle-eastern and infinitely funky. I think my friend Gary said they sometimes use this kind of guitar that somebody sits on. Crazy. They also use these drums that sound like somebody's name...what was it? Roy-roy's? No. Bob-bob's? Nah. ..I got it: bongo's!

This album is one of the best of the year so far. Just like my first wife's decaying corpse, it refuses to be put away. I find myself craving it if I go more than a day without. It's alternatively cool and relaxing, then quick and pounding; mostly, it's a fast friend who makes such a big impact in such a short time that you openly wonder how you got along before their arrival.

Personal favorites: Sunrise (beat-heavy, notifies you of their arrival, gets you moving); Wait for the Wintertime (tremendously kinetic, epic adventure across a continent); 2080 (his plaintive voice is trying to tell a story but who's got time to listen?); Wait for the Summer (walking through the market); Worms (an old man tells you a story & belly dancers seduce you as you're robbed - wake up!!).

Great for hoedowns and cataclysms.

great album
I'll agree that Yeasayer has done something unique on this album. I'm not really one to make a big deal classifying music, so the genre Amazon gives it, experimental rock, is good enough.

Their music highlights my sense of self-awareness. It accomplishes this through layered vocals and echoed guitar. To be honest, I can't make out what the lead singer is even saying most of the time, but that has done little to affect my enjoyment of this album. Very original stuff.

Say Yes to Yeasayer
Hey, remember the days when albums gave birth to singles and not vice versa? Let alone, when musicians gathered all their wits and created cohesive albums, albums with concept, albums like a journey? I don't know, The Beatles' White Album comes to mind where the songs are interwoven and placed carefully and deliberately in between, before and after and you start thinking about transitions, you look back at it as a collective experience. Like others have mentioned, there is no way to categorize Yeasayer. I'd say that each member of the band adds their own magic touch to the tracks and their diverse experiences collide (positively of course). I wouldn't say there is a frontman because each of them plays a pivotal role...and this joy of music making, of togetherness resonates in the album and definitely on stage. A must-see live; you'll never leave a concert feeling so good, so inspired. I suppose the most appropriate categorization I've seen for this band is simply "world," because it is humble, inspired, sometimes folky, definitely rhythmic, and there are elements of that~ somewhere on this dusty planet people don't have enough food and water but they sure as hell have music....I suppose that is how I'd summarize "world" and thus, Yeasayer.

Old sounds made new
The debut album from the band Yeasayer isn't necessarily one that's going to reach out and grab you right off the bat. Instead, you are more likely to find yourself humming a short refrain or repeating a couple of melodic lyrics and wondering where it came from. The music can seem almost overwhelming at moments, but is actually comprised of many simple parts all layered into a rich whole. The members use a lot of Eastern sounds, specifically reminiscent of Indian music, along with multiple vocal tracks and a dash of indie rock sensibilities. The result is something resembling a Bollywood soundtrack, a drum circle, Built to Spill, and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Undoubtedly the strongest track on the album, "2080" may make a good litmus test for anyone unsure if that sounds like something they might enjoy. And that's understandable. It's a mixture of sounds that could fall apart at any stage of production. If the vocalists weren't all good singers, if the percussionists weren't solid, if the levels weren't mixed down just perfectly then any of the songs could quickly become grating, but track after track comes together nicely. They might not all get stuck in your head, but the worst thing you can say about any given song on All Hour Cymbals is that it's a really nice song. For the best tracks, they've created songs that combine a sense of ancient history with new sounds.

Recommended tracks: Again, "2080" is the best song on the album. If you don't like it, you likely won't care for anything else here. "Sunrise" is another great track which allows the music to come more to the forefront. These two together represent the basic sounds of the album and, unsurprisingly, were the two chosen to be on the first single. "Wintertime" dips closer to the indie rock sounds, "Forgiveness" plays heavily with the chanting aspects, and the album comes to a nice close with "Red Cave", which sums up what the group is doing very well.