Eugenia, I’ve listened to Odd Blood a few times. It’s solid, but not even close to being a frontrunner for the best album of 2010. Nor does it surpass the excellence of All Hour Cymbals. Its momentum is too ungainly in places and its musical touchstones are too transparent. The horn sections featured on some tracks, “The Children” and “Mondegreen,” namely, are derivative of TV on the Radio to the brink of plagiarism. It’s a creative explosion for Yeasayer, to be sure, but the album as a whole feels a bit undisciplined, scattered and inconsistent. “O.N.E.” will be one of the year’s best songs though.

But I think our difference is that I prefer that some of the tracks on any given album have be more mood-changing than the rest. It’s simply a different listening pattern. I can’t listen to 10 depressed songs in one sit. I need a variation. I like music to play and surface many different feelings in me, rather than just one. Midlake’s album made me nostalgic about my mountain home where I grew up. Goats and sheep running around, people always with a smile, climbing trees. Which is a good feeling to being reminded of your childhood. But then, for 45 minutes, that was the only feeling it got out of me. And a bit of depression too, for not being able to be a child and at my real home anymore. It was a bit too much of the same feeling for me.

Regarding the Yeasayer album, I found all 7 first songs on the album to be top notch, but the last 3 were a bit lacking (if not a bit underdeveloped, or cheesy). Overall though, pretty good.

but i can’t get over the dude’s voice

sounds too much like chris cornell

Besides, that Pitchfork review is one of the most needlessly inflammatory and self-indulgent reviews I’ve ever come across with any given source. People act like Pitchfork is the Supreme Court of the music journalism world–the ones with the end-all, be-all say-so. Even if you’re not one of them, it is undeniable Pitchfork has its thousands of mindless minions that will obey their every command and heed to their every word. They are nowhere near the best source for music reviews. Unless you just love pompously inflated, contradictory, masturbatory, self-important horseshit that focuses more on the writer’s capabilities rather than the musical content at hand.

Regardless, I still feel like the naysayers of the album are SORELY missing the point. Much of their dissatisfaction stems from a clear lack of patience and active listening. The lack of surface variation between the tracks is aesthetically chosen, and not resulting from monotony or a band void of inspiration. The Courage of Others is an exercise of restraint. I feel those who are still haven’t gotten into this album should observe with high-end headphones. In this context, it is easier to hear how assiduously constructed each of these songs is. The leaf-strewn density of the arrangements will unveil intensely melodic, richly detailed songs accentuated with superbly understated craft. This album sidesteps explorations in catchy songwriting and instead opts for textured, moody passages of bruised ruminations and worldly afflictions. Casual approaches WILL not and DO not work for this album.

I did not expect The Courage of Others to be so dichotomizing. People should have let the album settle before determining its merit. I am confident between The Trials of Van Occupanther and this latest endeavor, the latter is the much deeper and ultimately more satisfying effort. I have never heard an album with a more unruffled balance of modernity and timelessness. It’s a magical alchemy.

With that said, I have yet to receive my copy of Odd Blood in the mail and I consciously avoided the leak, but for the record, just because an album is more challenging, which may or may not be the case, doesn’t mean it implies superiority. A band’s sound can be challenging without being self-consciously experimental, as evident with Midlake’s catalog.