It’s not often in an album review you’re forced to touch on McLuhan media philosophy and the convergence of technology amidst describing purely musical elements. But then, YACHT isn’t your average band- it’s more an umbrella term for the creative output of production duo Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans, and in the four years since YACHT’s last LP ‘Shangri-La’, if anything they have become more conceptual and militant with the Lynchian disconnect of 21st Century living.
Indeed, the album’s title encapsulates this perfectly. ‘I Thought the Future Would Be Cooler’ is an enduring theme, as it’s a universal fallacy to overestimate progress, both personal and societal. And make no mistake: we are currently living this bland future that YACHT warned of, a future of mushrooming multimedia possibilities and yet no real connection at any level. Indeed, there were a variety of ways one could have discovered this album in the lead-up to its release: Google Map co-ordinates leading to a billboard in LA with the album’s title, drone footage of the billboard with a smiling Bechtolt and Evans uploaded to Youtube, Periscope streaming, limited release faxes sent via dedicated app to fans, and a Buzzfeed “tracklisticle” with accompanying GIFs. This is because in 2015, “the album is dead, the novel is dead, but the GIF loops forever” (their words, not mine).
If the future we live in isn’t that cool, then, this album certainly is. It’s a tightrope walk balancing these themes of dissatisfaction and disconnect with the eleven summery, futuristic electropop tracks presented. Indeed, a lot of these songs sound like late-era Architecture in Helsinki, but while Architecture’s music was intelligent, it never aspired to such eccentricity or grandeur. Likewise, while Metronomy often drew grand themes in their music, their music never quite delved into such scavenging pop pastiche. The deepest moments are achieved on the opening and closing tracks, bookending the party with two stern parents keeping an eye on the mischief inside and making sure it doesn’t get out of hand. Miles & Miles is a loopy, murky sort of track that repeats the refrain “Oh-oh just like we always have / We’re born, we live, we die/ Just like we always will/ We’re born, we live, we die” until it all sounds too difficult to continue, at which point it bursts like a flower, increases the pace and introduces a lot of the recurring sounds and samples of later in the album. White Mirror sounds like a B-Side from ‘The Golden Echo’, Kimbra’s second LP, mixing 90’s melodies with 2015 production values. Matter sounds like a moment of emotional transcendence, a lifting above the drudgery of modern life, but the lyrics keep chipping away at the idea that this could be all there is. Ringtone and Hologram both position themselves as deeper house tracks, and serve as the needed circuit breaker before the feel-good of the music overwhelms the message.
Easily the track of the record is I Wanna Fuck You Till I’m Dead, a track so debauched, so fun, so full of ridiculous scuzzy power chords that it simply MUST be a one-hit wonder from 1998, living out its retirement on high rotation on 97.3 FM. But no, this delightfully track frolicks in the shallows, sparse drum machine beats giving way to too-loud ridiculous guitar, electronic screeches and syrupy vocals. It rolls along like a luxury yacht on the Azure Sea, where everybody aboard is carefree, sleazy, and probably checking their phones every five minutes. 9/10
Before tonight, I had never really found myself at a show with more laptops than instruments, and while I was excited to embark upon the new adventure, I was wary about the outcome.
Yacht Club DJs are hitting the road (via US airways) with Mumford & Sons for a series of SOLD OUT Gentlemen of the Road Stopovers in the States!
Inertia is thrilled to announce the upcoming release from the always bold and ever-brave Architecture in Helsinki.
