There probably could not have been higher critical expectations for Brooklyn band Yeasayer’s follow-up to their debut record All Hour Cymbals. Right from the band’s inception they garnered attention for coming at music in a slightly different way from the rest of the crowd. There’s always an electronic swoop, a random sonic quirk, Eastern-style scale or just sick musicianship to help them overleap the standard indie sound. So their new release Odd Blood, out now on Mute records, was expected to be a wild progression, a flight further into the sonic empyrean. It was to find a place of its own, somewhere out there in the indie stratosphere. In many ways Odd Blood achieves that high promise, although it still feels like the something great in Yeasayer which so many sense did not emerge as fully formed on the new release as was hoped. Catching up with Yeasayer member Ira Wolf Tuton just as they set out on their UK tour, I hoped to get some answers as to how the new release, with its characteristic strengths and surprise weaknesses, came about.

After just a few minutes of discussion with Ira it became evident that experimentation had indeed played a large part in the writing and recording of Odd Blood: "With the production we were looking for those bubblegum tones that really, really hit your cerebellum hard. That’s part of our production process: labouring over and over and trying to figure out what is a new interesting tone for a certain part and not just relying on an electric guitar." Wondering whether this experimentation was a more personal project of artistic exploration or a search for sounds that would appease the critics, I asked Ira if he felt that Yeasayer needed to prove themselves to their listeners. The answer came hard and fast: "No. We need to prove ourselves to ourselves. We’ve been fortunate enough to develop a fan base that supports us and keeps us going. Hopefully that’ll give us a chance to write and produce more projects and explore different parts of our brains. If people like [the music] then that’s great because it helps us to be able to do it for a living and I don’t want to do anything else." If this answer came a little too hard and fast – suggesting that having to prove themselves is something Yeasayer has indeed thought about – negotiating the demands of the public and the critics isn’t all the band has been thinking about. Ira spoke at length about how we live in a "time in human history when media and technologies are developing at a pace that we as humans almost can’t even comprehend". Does Yeasayer channel this modern condition in their music? "Definitely. I think it would be inevitable. We’re using the most modern recording technologies. We probably wouldn’t be able to do what we do if we didn’t have them; that’s the system that we’ve learned our craft under. We’re not trying to be retroist, we’re trying to be as contemporary as possible and reflect the realities of our time."

That’s when Odd Blood starts to make sense: it’s a record written and recorded by three musicians supremely committed to the artistic project of reflecting the modern condition, searching out new sounds, writing and creating music for now. (Ira even spoke of making his artistic ideal the music of the future, though he was quick to add "but that’s a lofty goal".) Given this experimental project and their creative formula it really is no surprise that Odd Blood turned out the way it did, yielding some striking new music, along with some, well, odd quirks. Whatever you think about the new record, Yeasayer’s artistic conviction, healthy obsession with making it new and unconcern for the critics suggests that they remain a band to be watched, and that Odd Blood is ultimately the positive second step in what is going to be an exciting career.