Odd Blood

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Don稚 judge a book by its cover・or an album by its first track. Odd Blood gets off to an odd start with 典he Children� -- a robotic, plodding song that prizes mood over melody -- before settling into a more balanced groove, mixing the multicultural sounds of Yeasayer's debut with a new emphasis on electronica, global trip-hop, and digital production. Like All Hour Cymbals, this is a thinking man痴 album, one that requires its listeners to put on their thinking caps as well as their dancing shoes. It痴 more urban than its predecessor, though, with most songs ditching the tribal harmonies and lo-fi analog ambience of the band痴 earlier work in favor of an electric, textured sound. 鏑ove Me Girl,� with its mix of Balearic beat keyboards and sampled female vocals, could have come from an Ibiza nightclub, while 溺adder Red� strikes an unlikely balance between synth pop, Middle Eastern folk, and ・0s dance music. Anand Wilder often abandons his guitar entirely, focusing instead on the keyboards that serve as Odd Blood痴 bedrock, and he sings the latter song in a voice that痴 clear, pleasant, and devoid of the yelping that characterized some of All Hour Cymbals・tracks. Chris Keating has similarly improved, so much so that he delivers a rather stunning ballad -- the Air-influenced 的 Remember� -- with warmth and understated confidence. Odd Blood痴 emphasis on genre-mashing can overwhelm the weaker tunes, whose melodies are sometimes less interesting than the arrangements themselves, but the album has enough highlights to outweigh any filler on side B. All in all, this is a rare sophomore album that widens the band's sound without narrowing its appeal. ~ Andrew Leahey, Rovi