'Amen and Goodbye' and Hello Again: Yeasayer Returns

Since its debut All Hour Cymbals in 2007, Yeasayer has used album releases to reintroduce and reinvent itself. From the baroque electro-pop of 2010's Odd Blood, to the breezy straightforwardness of 2012's Fragrant World, the band displays a churning musical curiosity and search for sounds. The band's latest, Amen & Goodbye, continues in this discontinuous vein, occasionally confounding fans and providing no shortage of experimental cul-de-sacs (hey, they're called Yeasayer — they say "yea" to everything). But Amen & Goodbye is ultimately a bricolage of the band's greatest strengths: thoughtful writing, synthesized global sounds, and delightful psychedelic confusion. Yeasayer recorded hours of material to tape in analog fashion, then had drummer and producer Joey Waronker reassemble that material into the jumpy, kaleidoscopic final product. Hear the band perform some of it live, and talk about its latest phase shift.