Amen & Goodbye by Yeasayer: A Track-by-Track Analysis

Brooklyn weirdos Yeasayer released their fourth LP, Amen & Goodbye, last month, and it's definitely one of my favourite albums of the year thus far, a colourful cornucopia of bouncy pop and blissed-out psychedelia that's easily up there with 2010's sublime Odd Blood.

Yeasayer decamped to the Catskill Mountains to record their latest opus, and they must have done a lot of reading while they were there because Amen & Goodbye is packed to the rafters with arcane scientific and biblical references. As a result, the record's lyrics can seem kind of impenetrable, at least until you remember that Google exists; some might wistfully suggest that search engines have robbed works like this of the bewitching, impenetrable mystery that could otherwise have been such a large part of their charm, but if you yourself are one of those people then I'd advise you to stop reading now because I'm about to perform a Google-assisted dissection of every track on the album.

Mandy's Universe

Universe was written and recorded by Mel Fung and her husband Andy in the years leading up to Mel's untimely death from cancer. The album, with its psychedelic through-the-keyhole artwork, invites us to briefly view the world through the eyes of someone who knew she wouldn't be here much longer; as such, it is a sad, confrontational listen, but to Fung's eternal credit, her songs never totally succumb to despair even as they stare death square in the face.

Indeed, Angela - the album's bouncy opener - will come as a disarming surprise if you're braced for a Hospice-style miserython:

Things do get a bit more contemplative further down the tracklist, but the only truly devastating track here is This is Nothing. The title initially suggests a cheerfully dismissive handwave ("How's it going, Mel?" "I'm fine! This is nothing!"), but the song itself is actually a numb-sounding number that imagines the afterlife as a vast, empty void:

"Never any shelter from this rain
Never anything to bring you pleasure again
Ever
This is Nothing
This is Nothing
No pleasure whatsoever
No pleasure whatsoever"

In the main, though, Fung uses her final recordings to ponder not her own death but the mysteries of Life itself. "Can you tell me who I am, can you tell me why?" she asks searchingly on the Trwbador-esque Can You Save Me, perhaps attempting to answer The Big Questions before her time on Earth runs out. Elsewhere, on Look Up at the Stars, she implores the rest of us to consider those same questions now instead of waiting for terminal illness to force us into contemplation:

"Wherever you are tonight
Look up at the stars tonight
Wherever you are tonight
Look up and remember"

Universe is a lot of things: a knowing swansong, one final artistic statment, a heartfelt message to the people Fung was preparing to leave behind (had I known Mel personally, the beautiful I Don't Miss You would have had me curled up and weeping into my kneecaps for months). But perhaps more than anything, this album serves as a friendly hello from beyond the final curtain; Fung won't be here to learn whether there's life beyond this planet's boundaries, or what The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything really is, and so the purpose of Universe is to ask the rest of us to keep searching for those solutions in her memory.

Universe by Mandy (Mel + Andy = Mandy, geddit?) is out today on Bubblewrap Records. Buy it here.

In Praise of Neu! '75 (Guest Post)

Today's guest blogger is Christophe Forme of La Forme, who describe themselves as an "electro/alternative band from South Wales but with a French heritage". Head over to La Forme's SoundCloud page and have a listen while you read Christophe's take on krautrock classic Neu! '75, which turned forty years old last year:

Never exactly close friends, Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger reconvened in Cologne in 1975 to record their third album as Neu! simply to fulfil a contractual obligation. Arriving in the studio with nothing planned or written and recognising that they were never going to reconcile their considerable differences, they decided on a unique approach to '75 and cut the album straight down the middle, taking a side each. On paper it sounded like they were heading for disaster, but on record they produced an original, fresh and unique album that hasn't aged in the forty years that have passed since its strange conception.

One-Album Wonders

As I believe I've mentioned before, I love a band with a big back catalogue. There's nothing quite like discovering a whole new seam of great music to devour and trying to decide what route you'll take through it all; it's even better when your new favourite band is still active, because you know there's even more good stuff to come.

Today's blog is about the exact opposite of that. Today, I'd like to talk about three bands who only released one album before breaking up or just disappearing and never surfacing again. Where some LPs are puzzle pieces that constitute only a small part of the discography's broader picture, these three albums stand alone, each one making a single, concise statement that the artists concerned presumably never felt the need to expand upon.

Without further ado, then, here are three of my favourite one-album wonders:

Manifest! by Friends

(Released 2012)

I've been listening to this album quite a lot over the past week or so. Every song sounds like it could have been a single, perhaps because the album's ever-changing sonic palette makes every track stand out. That said, most of Manifest! is predominantly percussion-led, which appropriately enough makes the album sound like a bunch of friends gathered in a big warehouse to bang drums, shake tambourines, and sing some songs together.

Lyrically, Manifest! covers quite a lot of ground: Friend Crush is simply about wanting to friends with someone and Sorry is about wanting to be more than friends, but Ideas on Ghosts gets all deep with musings on death and I'm His Girl is a full-blown manifesto for how to have a healthy relationship with someone. Friends split up not long after releasing this debut LP, but by including loads of different sounds and pondering loads of different topics, Manifest! manages to be an extremely fulfilling listen that does indeed give us a very rounded impression of what frontwoman Samantha Urbani must be like to be friends with.

The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight (Guest Post)

Today's guest blogger is Libby O'Neil, a singer-songwriter from Lawrence, Kansas. Her EP, Not Enough, came out earlier this month - you can check it out on Libby's Bandcamp page or read my review of it here.

If, having heard her music and read her thoughts on this Neko Case album, you fancy following Libby on Twitter, her handle is @libbyoneilmusic.

I was first introduced to Neko Case through The New Pornographers, but her vocal additions to A.C. Newman's songs, while lovely, pale in comparison to the power of her solo work. Over the last three decades, Case has constructed an intimidating discography; anyone who's heard even just a few minutes of her work knows that her voice alone can make the hair on your arms stand to attention.

Case's most recent solo album, The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, was released in 2013 on Anti Records. Recorded after a series of deaths in Case's family, this album is her most emotionally incisive collection of songs to date. On her previous album, Middle Cyclone, Case's characters and emotions were painted into the forces of nature; on The Worse Things Get..., Case's writing is firmly rooted in the minutiae of human life, from the slog of being a touring musician on I'm From Nowhere to the heart-breaking portrait of a child being verbally abused by their mother in Nearly Midnight, Honolulu.