LISTEN NOW: YACHT's "Shangri-La"

Gosh, it sure has been awhile. Good to be back.

As Quinn S. and I have so often mentioned, the music department over at National Public Radio does a fantastic job bringing us new music (before official release) in full-album form every week. Guess what, this week is no exception. Most recently, our fearless editor-in-chief sounded the horn on First Listen's release of the self-titled release from Bon Iver. Today is all about an outfit that, until this current spin, has evaded my eardrums: YACHT. It's also about their over-populated niche in the music industry today. 

With all the computer music floating out there in the tubes of the Interwebs, electro/dance-pop music is easy to find. Put it this way, if dance music was our currency, we'd have a very serious inflation issue (see: the Weimar Republic when folks needed a wheelbarrow-full of Marks to pay for a loaf of bread). 

All it takes is a brief scan of the popular/latest playlists over at the Hype Machine (or MM's inbox) to see that this type of music is pervasive. Not to completely rip the genre, but it lends itself to struggling artists with a couple of microphones, a drum machine, some fancy (but easily torrented) software, and a decent computer to make acceptable dancy-beats. Where techno and trip-hop used to be something that required intense knowledge of turntables and a very involved on-stage setup with tons of wires, powerful home-studios are now able to churn out the stuff like a cotton-candy machine on full whirl. 

Read the rest of the post and catch the link, after the hop. 

This is why the genre begs for the work of artists like YACHT, LCD Soundsystem (RIP), !!! and their peers. Besides a notable dynamism that is missing in freely distributed home-produced dance music, YACHT distance themselves from the competition (and their new genre evolving out of the Internet) with a huge jump in creativity and, most importantly, production value. Shangri-La is no exception to the rule. The Oregon-based outfit, like James Murphy & Co., is able to integrate those incessant 4/4 dance grooves into spirited and haunting vocals, accented by crafty and unexpected shifts in tempo and phrasing. The harmonies are bigger and wider, the drumming is more precise, and the arrangements of each track continue to demonstrate why these people can call themselves successful. Where some Internet-based dance artists lack the full capacity for well-layered tracks and rely heavily on negative space in their tracks, Shangri-La features tightly-woven tunes that never leave you guessing. Most importantly, signed artists in the genre like YACHT really know how to write a pop song (it helps when DFA is in your corner).

This isn't to completely disparage the hard-working people who rely on the Internet for distribution of their dance music. Rather, what I'm getting at here is a reason for giving bands like YACHT the time of day if you're like me and completely burnt out on the countless dance-remixes, mashups, and general techno-esque music that inundates us music lovers every day. YACHT demonstrate with Shangri-La the craft that makes professional musicians, well, professional.

Happy listening. 

YACHT's Shangri-La on NPR First Listen: here.