Circadian EP Review
Yeah Great Fine's New Seven-Inch Is Sunshine and Glass-Filled Lollipops
Rhythmic mathematicians Yeah Great Fine are set to release its new seven-inch EP, Circadian on 20-Sided Records. If you’ve happened to catch one of the many amazing sets this band played throughout the 2000 summer you may have heard these tracks already, but the group has never sounded as tight and playful as on this release.
The band should be feeling as light and airy as these tunes sound, because the songwriting has vastly matured since its self-titled debut, which had gathered the band’s prior catalog of material and cleaned it up for your headphones’ pleasure. The band’s primary songwriter, drummer Dave Hires, is no less than a musical archive of odd time signatures and propulsive beats. His attention to detail has never been so precise as on songs like “Bright Lights”, which often flails in and out of structure at will.
Producer Paul Laxer does a great job of letting the band traipse through the sandy summer moments on this record, while thickening the timbres of the instruments when necessary. But as tight as the band sounds, one would assume he probably spent more time allowing the band to unfurl these songs like a towel on a beach. “Lullaby” is a melancholy as its namesake at first, while “Rise With the Sun” dares you not to sing along, and “It’s All I Want” bounces like a runaway kangaroo.
Even a casual listener would notice the emphasis Laxer and the band put on the vocal work throughout this EP. While lead singer Jake Hershman’s reverb-tinged vocals often center on thinly sentimental themes, his melodical delivery plays out as nimbly as the accompaniment underneath. And the often-harmonious addition of keyboardist Brian Hoberg’s vocals makes it hard not to compare them to the pristine singing of modern bands like Grizzly Bear or Fleet Foxes.
Throughout these four songs, which go so quickly that putting the EP on repeat seems a necessity, the band never loses its love for an amusing song that’s always on the edge of being a dance anthem. You can almost hear Hires trying to force melody into the most complex metal rhythm he could come up with at times. That’s truly the beauty of Yeah Great Fine to me -- its love for melody and pop is constantly coerced into more spastic avenues, which has resulted in some of the most innovative and refreshing moments in Portland’s music scene as of late.
Yeah Great Fine's EP release party is tonight at the World Famous Kenton Club with Jared Mees and the Grown Children and Decades.
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