See Mystery Lights

We Say...

Review by Andrew Parks

Now that YACHT's no longer the solo project of singer/multi-instrumentalist Jona Bechtolt, you might be thinking that it's not all that different from the beat-guided avant pop of his former boy/girl band the Blow. (Claire L. Evans, a noise rock vet who first appeared on a bass-heavy YACHT remix of the Blow's "Hock It," joined the fold fulltime in 2008.)

If only things were that simple. YACHT's DFA debut, See Mystery Lights, is more than just a vast improvement on Bechtolt's previous LPs. Since he actually gets along with Evans — the Blow was more of a screaming match — YACHT's duo phase has been able to produce truly organic music, complete with a carefully-constructed mythology involving life, death and triangles. (Dig into the mission statements and extensive song commentaries at teamyacht.com to see what we mean.) Seriously subversive stuff, in other words, which goes down perfectly with the pair's pastiche approach to pop and dance music. Take "Summer Song," for instance. While it was originally intended as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to LCD Soundsystem — the disco-indebted band fronted by YACHT's new label boss, James Murphy — the track's clanging cowbells, steady bass throb and icy vocals (something you'd never hear on a Blow record) make it one of the best DFA singles in recent memory. And it's not the only one on here; most of See Mystery Lights is hard-wired with massive hooks, from the sputtering loops and delirious choruses of "I'm In Love With a Ripper" to the sun-stroked riffs and pass-the-mic pleasantries of "Psychic City (Voodoo City)."

The only complaint? That the alternate versions of two tracks (a synth-spraying "Party Mix" of "I'm In Love With a Ripper" and a bizarre, art-damaged take on "Psychic City") brings the original song count down to a meager eight. With cuts this catchy coming out of YACHT's post-Evans camp, that kind of skimping is just cruel.