Album Review: YACHT – Shangri-La

Ever since I watched the weeklong special on The History Channel about how the world is scheduled to end in 2012, part of me has been living my life with that expiration date in mind. Hundreds of dead birds falling from the sky… Thousands of fish washing up on the shore… Sarah Palin… All signs point to looming apocalypse. As a result, my pseudo-subconscious attitude for the past year or so has been something like, “Well, the universe may implode soon, so I’m gonna go to another music festival now, and worry about finding a real job after December 2012.” In other words, “the earth, the earth, the earth is on fire/we don’t have no daughter/let the motherfucker burn.” At least that’s how indie-electro art-rockers Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans of YACHT put it in “Dystopia (The Earth is on Fire)”, the compulsively danceable single off their newest LP, Shangri-La.

“Dystopia (The Earth is on Fire)” is our post-apocalyptic fight song, a cautionary tale, a science-fiction story for our particular eco-socio-political landscape,” explains the band’s website. “But as tempting as it is to give into a horror of our crumbling, radiation-leaking, bomb-launching reality, where the tracks lead is ultimately up to us.”

With Shangri-La, YACHT takes us away from this crumbling, radiation-leaking, bomb-launching reality on a fuck-all magical mystery tour of chimerical musical landscapes laden with beguiling beats and sparkling synthesizers that leave us dancing in the face of doom.

“If there was a hell/that’s where I belong/for breaking all the rules/and singing all these songs,” chirps Evans in “Paradise Engineering”, a tambourine-filled call to come together and create a bliss so large that it dissolves all the world’s negativity. “And if you want me to be your god then I will be your god!”

Yes, please.

There’s a certain magic in being able to shake your booty to music with heavy themes, and YACHT nails that duality perfectly here, whether they’re discussing God, love, or the space-time continuum. Opening with some rather ominous religious intonations buoyed by echoing snaps and stark synth spikes, “Holy Roller” explodes into a grooving odyssey of big brass crescendos, electronic bass wobbles, and a catchy hook assuring us not to “worry about God up above/we’re gonna live life in love!”

And don’t worry about getting bored either, because love is no tired platitude in YACHTopia. “I love you like a small-town cop/Yeah, I want to smash your face in with a block,” the duo croons on the slow-burning “Love in the Dark”, before heading to the cosmos, where frenetic beats, low-pitched, stuttering vocals, and literary allusions aplenty make for a pretty sublime combo in “Beam Me Up”.

Overall, Shangri-La prevails as a light-hearted if not slightly heavy-handed piece of social commentary, addressing the woes of organized religion, global warming, and the daily grind without ever surrendering to self-pity. In fact, the record begins and ends in paradise, but the bright and bubbly “Utopia” for which the opening track is named (where we’re told that “there’s nothing in the future/it’s up to us to make”) is a very different place than the concluding title track. “Shangri-La” feels like the ultimate exit music, the bright and bubbly notions of “Utopia” now fleshed out with a gratified sense of enlightenment, a more clearly delineated sense of the same kind of secular contentment that Belinda Carlisle sang about in 1987. “If I can’t go to heaven let me go to L.A.,” trills Evans over a bouncy piano-laden melody as sweet and bright as a lollipop in the sun. “If we build a Utopia, will you come and stay?/Shangri-la-lala-la-la-lala-la-la.”

Can I get a hell yeah? When the world ends, I’ll be joining Bechtolt and Evans. We’ll build a new world, where bliss reigns and people sing instead of talking and dance instead of walking. You can come, too, if you want.

YACHT (The Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta 3/16/10)

The brainchild of musician and multimedia performance artist Jona Bechtolt, YACHT prevails more as an experience than a band.  In fact, as their website’s official mission statement declares, YACHT is “a Band, a Belief System and a Business.”  In concert, it quickly becomes clear that performance, for YACHT, derives from art, but not in the annoying, pretentious, or esoteric sense. Think Banksy, light on the politics. While there remains something obviously tongue-in-cheek about the whole endeavor, Bechtolt clearly feels very passionate about what he has created, and wants nothing more than to share it. 

Backed by two-man opening act Bobby Birdman on bass and drums, YACHT’s performance struck gold with a combination of serious eccentricities, quirky exuberance, and faithful interpretation of 2009’s critically acclaimed See Mystery Lights, the first album to feature Claire Evans as an official band member.

As the other half of Team YACHT, Evans truly nails her role as Bechtolt’s female counterpart. Imagine if Karen O and Siouxsie Sioux somehow conceived a child that came out looking like Annie Lennox from Eurythmics.  With a blonde bob, ruby red lips, and skintight black dress, the heron-like Evans is a gothified diva who bounced around the stage like a curious puppy, tapping on everyone else’s instruments, tipping over microphone stands and tangling herself up in wires. 

Compared to their studio work, nearly everything YACHT played sounded better live, from the jaunty, rattling anthem “The Afterlife” to the T-Pain-spoofing  auto-tune of “I’m In Love with a Ripper.”  Evans breathed unprecedented life into “It’s Boring/You Can Live Anywhere You Want,” a double-track that felt a little, well, boring in its 9-minute studio cut.  In addition, Bechtolt led a rollicking, electrified cover of L.A. band X’s garage-punk oldie “Nausea.”

Then there was near-flawless feel-good masterpiece “Psychic City,” the buoyant and bubbling little gem that proffers the delightful idea of a “voodoo city/where every little thing has its own secret life.” I must mention that this is one of my personal favorite songs—which is probably the only reason I noticed that Evans messed up the lyrics of the first verse—but other than that I was very pleased with the performance. They got all the “HUH!”s just right.

Never even needing to look at each other, the chemistry between Bechtolt and Evans thrives on the power of minimalism.  The two are clearly on the same wavelength, shining in small moments of almost familial synchronicity, such as their pokerfaced Macarena entrance, performed to the twittering pulsations of “Ring the Bell,” which provocatively chants “Will we go to heaven/Or will we go to hell/It’s my understanding/That neither are real” before dissolving into Three 6 Mafia-esque stutter effects. With Bechtolt in a white suit and white sneakers and Evans in head-to-toe black, a kind of yin/yang duality comes into play: together, they form a perfectly balanced whole and prove that on YACHT’s stage, there is room for two divas.

Unafraid to ham it up or break into spastic little dances, Bechtolt kept the energy high throughout the performance, basking in various forms of audience interaction.  There was a Q&A session, introduced with the promise, “We’ll answer anything!” (Q: “Why are you awesome?” A: “Why am I a mirror reflecting your awesomeness?”), and even a “guided meditation” in which he came down into the crowd on bended knee; “the world may end in my lifetime but my energy will continue,” Bechtolt intoned, “I will love. I will not attack.”

As the band’s website proclaims, “All people are welcome to become members of YACHT.  Accordingly YACHT is and always will be what YACHT is when YACHT is standing before you.”  So what is YACHT when YACHT is standing before you?  To put it simply: a damn good time.

Review by Hilary Cadigan