Watch: YACHT 'Psychic City (Voodoo City) music video

YACHT - Psychic City (Voodoo City) from Jona Bechtolt on Vimeo.

YACHT || Listen
Jona Bechtolt– founding member of YACHT, former member of the Blow– is a huge talent, something that may not have been readily apparent on any of his three previous LPs. Those albums, created largely as solo endeavors, will not have prepared listeners for See Mystery Lights. Now an official partnership between Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, who performed on several songs on 2007’s I Believe In You, Your Magic Is Real, YACHT finally feel like a full-fledged band with direction and vision, particularly given the added weight (or rather, levity) of Evans’ influence.

The songs on See Mystery Lights– from the bouncy, burbling you-can’t-take-it-with-you screed “The Afterlife” (which plays like a less spastic companion piece to the Mae Shi’s “Run to Your Grave”) to the roller rink-ready vocoder vocals of “I’m In Love With a Ripper”– represent YACHT at their most poppy. It’s a collection of stone jams that finds the band finally as hellbent on experimenting and expanding the boundaries of its sonic scope as it is on having fun. Built on electronic foundations– laser effects, skittering computerized beats, and spacey synth lines (or guitar riffs that have been tuned or distorted to sound like synths)– these new songs are giddy with creative freedom while remaining tethered in service of their melodies. The vocal melodies are bright and buoyant, but delivered (by either band member, or in unison) in a chanted, oftentimes detached monotone that plays up the repetitive lyrics’ mantra-like feel and adds a welcome undercurrent of slacker cool to their otherwise sugary optimism.- Pitchfork