Remember Brooklyn experimental rock legends Yeasayer? Of course you do, if you went anywhere near an indie rock club circa 2010 worth its salt (R.I.P. Lambda), you’d most definitely have heard the strains of hits like Ambling Alp and O.N.E. being blared over the speakers for everyone to shimmy to (because as if you could stop yourself).
We ask if you still remember them because they’ve been strangely, ominously quiet after 2012 and the release of their last album Fragrant World. They’ve barely made a peep since then, leaving many to wonder whether they were on some kind of hiatus and what the heck was going on. Today we got a clue of sorts. A very vague, very subjective, very nightmare-inducing clue, but a clue nonetheless. Make of this what you will:
Yeasayer updated their official website with that video today. There are no words apart from the title Amen And Goodbye, as a man without a face (‘I didn’t even know he had a problem!’) slowly spins around holding some kind of a bull statue while a haunting little piano melody plays in the background. It’s… godawfully creepy.
Several theories outlined are: this is the title and a snippet of Yeasayer’s next album, this is Yeasayer announcing that they are officially breaking up, a combination of both of those things or, my personal favourite, Yeasayer have been murdered by this man without a face, whoever or whatever he is, and he has recorded this video immediately after he sucked their music-making souls right into his face hole to let you know that there is no God.
At any rate, we’ll hopefully have something more concrete and less creepily cryptic coming from the band in the near future. They do still have two European festival dates in the coming year to attend (Best Kept Secret in the Netherlands and Croatia’s INmusic Festival), so if they don’t turn up for those then uh… maybe someone should call the cops or something.
In the meantime, can we all just pray for their safety, take this moment to remember seriously how outrageously good Ambling Alp was and hope to God that this is a sign of new music that’s just as good to come?