Yeasayer live review
Yeasayer seem unable to make up their minds – and while slight schizophrenia can often make a good band great, it just makes this lot frustratingly disjointed. Throughout tonight’s set, lead singer Chris Keating shifts his personality between histrionically camp Brandon Flowers-alike frontman and intensely still knob-twiddler, with each persona slightly undermining the sincerity of the other. Equally, their performances split into two distinct camps, each song opting either for the lush orchestral harmonies so ably demonstrated on their debut LP or bleak, loveless drum-machine jams. Even the background projections can’t decide between the kind of naff psychedelia-by-numbers last seen in the tie-dye-and-dreadlocks field at Glastonbury ’92 and genuinely spooky, other-worldly imagery.
When they get it right, however, as on 2080 and set closer Sunrise the band live up to their hype as bewitching, intelligent experimentalists. It’s just a shame they can’t decide to do this all the time.
