We met Ira Wolf Tuton from Yeasayer at Haldern Pop Festival 2010 and talked about their new album Odd Blood

‘Odd Blood’ went to #14 in the Norwegian album charts and #47 in Sweden. Do you have an explanation for the fact that you´ve become so popular in Northern Europe?

Ira: I actually didn´t know these chart positions, so thank you for letting me know. We recently were there and we even toured Norway and Sweden when our first record came out – more Norway actually. There was a big crowd comparatively for the rest of the world that was really familiar with our band. We didn´t really know why, and when we were playing there a couple of days ago, Anand was talking to somebody, finding out that it is apparently a big thing in Norway to watch ski videos, and a lot of our songs had been on ski videos.

That´s really random, isn´t it?

Ira: Well, what I do for a living is very random. I mean who knows why certain bands get big and certain don´t. It´s often-times a mystery. For me, even for us, I look at other bands all around the world and don´t know why they´re so big or why they´re so small, and the same goes for us. That´s my life, that´s what I do for a living, so obviously that´s a little closer to home. This whole thing can be a mystery but it´s also something that I´m constantly intrigued by. Also, going to different cultures and societies and noticing what a big deal in each case is and what will get you a bigger crowd. A lot of times it´s things that are outside of your control, it´s not necessarily all about the music you put out … Well, it is but it´s also about how people access it. What is the mainstream? I guess in Norway mainstream is watching ski videos.

‘Odd Blood’ was recorded at Jersville Studio in Woodstock. In what way did this environment impact on the recording?

Ira: I think Woodstock has such a stigma attached to it that we don´t really relate to, and we weren´t relating to when we decided to record up there. In a lot of ways, I think, we created a more wilderness album when we did the first record ‘All Hour Cymbals’ which we recorded in Brooklyn. Ironically, we made a much more urban album when we did the recording in Woodstock. The whole point of Woodstock for us wasn´t about the legend of the place or its spirituality. We were looking for a location where we could get a little bit of solitude and space away from the distractions we engage in so much and love so much about Brooklyn and New York. However, also being close enough to it where it wouldn´t be killing ourselves when we´re trying to get home at the weekend. We are by no means the first people who do this due to its proximity to New York. There is a community of musicians, engineers and studios. When we were looking for a place to rent it was probably easier to find a working studio or even a private home with a studio in it which is what we ended up finding in Woodstock as opposed to anywhere else. It was definitely affected by the equipment that was in the studio and the overall technologies that we were working with as well as the gear that we were trying to source out and the different tones that we could purveyfrom these various pieces of equipment ? not so much the aging hippies downtown.

Why did you decide to produce ‘Odd Blood’ yourself?

Ira: It wasn´t really a decision, it´s just the way we´ve done things so far. There are three of us in a room and I´ve always thought that our relationship with one another is very much one of producing each other, producing each other´s work and putting our heads together to create a common sound. Through the cycle of two albums, this has worked for us and we´ve found a working relationship that has enabled us to stay together as a band for five years. I just couldn´t think of anybody that we would have wanted to work with back then. There are certain people who we´re getting into it a little bit more and we´re trying to explore a few different ideas. I think right now we´re very much in the preliminary stages of where we´re going from here because we´ve been touring so hard for this album. By no means I am anti-bringing in somebody from the outside, having a different opinion in the room. Up till now, we´ve never even thought of it as a necessity. We all had so many ideas which we were trying to whittle down to a single one that it was enough to have the three of us doing it together.

There is so much going on in your music.

Ira: There´s too much going on in our music.

Can you elucidate the way you approach writing a song?

Ira: Some of the songs are written by one of us coming into the studio or coming into the group, some of them are a lot more bare bones than this and are worked on as we go about. There is no set way of going about working on things though. A big part of what we do together, probably even more so than writing, is the production side of it, figuring out what kind of tones or drums we´re gonna use, what feel we´re gonna do for this part. Also, trying to never get too connected or married to ideas so that you can have the ability to reverse things in contrast to getting blinded which I think is a challenge when you have your head in a secluded studio for so long. We´re definitely still trying to figure out how we go about doing this and how to do it. That´s one side of it that I feel can remain exciting about continuing to be a band. If we didn´t have that, if there was a set way and then the set way wasn´t working anymore I don´t think I´d enjoy it. Part of it is the dynamics and the unknown. I´m just realizing that we´re pretty novice and constantly keeping our ears and eyes open to what´s available to us, taking advantage of this.

In what way do the album cover and its title ‘Odd Blood’ relate to each other?

Ira: The album title was a name that was scrawled on a big board for a really long time amongst others. Once, we got to the end of it the name just seemed to fit. It´s open to interpretation very much, not superdefined which I really like and which sometimes even confuses people. Different people see it as meaning different things. At the same time, it seems like a visceral phrase, describing some kind of a futuristic slang. The artwork was done by Benjamin Phelan who we´ve worked with for a while on visual stuff. He did a bunch of our light set ups over the years. He and Chris worked on a few different ideas together – working from listening to the music and various conversations that went back and forth. With the title and the final product it is what you see, a kind of an amalgamation of a futuristic human robotic drone of a personality. To get a solid, analytical answer you probably need to ask Ben. I regard them both as futuristic interpretations, representing different ideas of singularity.

I got the impression that you have a soft spot for deformed faces or no faces at all in your videos and artwork which creates a bit of mysticism. What´s this all about?

Ira: It´s just nice to have some artistic and visual consistency and references as you go forward. Even though the two album covers are very different, featuring two different techniques with Chris doing the first one, which is more a collage whereas the second is much more of a computer generated image, they still have a continuity of image. The whole idea relates back to being human as these are just images of humanity, showing a head. This is one of the most commonly reproduced images in our society like portraiture or the ‘Swings’. Human society over thousands of years has always tried to re-represent what your head and shoulders are.

Chris apparently said that the aim of ‘Odd Blood’ was to sonically challenge Rihanna in the clubs. Do you think you´ve succeeded?

Ira: I think we´ve succeeded much more in comparison to the first record. I remember being in a club and the DJ played a bunch of different stuff and then one of our songs came up and it was so hazy and squashed, and it was mastered totally differently and it just couldn´t compete with all this club banging music. I definitely think the production activates service in a pretty big manner. The low end kind of destroys some speakers in a way that I´m excited about. A lot more people are listening to Rihanna, I mean we´re not trying to outsell her, we´re just trying to blow her away in a mix – with the low end.

What would be the perfect place or occasion to listen to ‘Odd Blood’ in your opinion?

Ira: We just did a signing session at Latitude and this very pretty couple came up to us and said; “I don´t wana be too forward but we´ve listened to your album a lot while having sex”. And we were like; “Awesome, that´s really cool”. So we asked them what the best songs to climax to are and they answered ‘I Remember’ and ‘Mondegreen’. And we were like; “Wow, you guys are getting pretty deep in that album, that´s like pretty far along. That´s good for you guys.” This is probably as good a way as any.

Your website is very interactive. Can you tell me something about the intention of featuring a ‘code organ’ and the ‘ambling alp experience’?

Ira: It´s just another way to engage people´s senses. There are so many different ways that people explore and experience media at the moment and this is also constantly changing. One of our excitements is to try and continue to find different ways that people are getting turned on to things and the various possibilities that people interpret music. Even the question; “What is a band to people?” and this goes back to the artwork. A band doesn´t have to be three, four or five sweaty dudes standing up on stage, it doesn´t have to be this traditional idea of The Beatles. At this point, it can be so much more by embracing a diversity of media technologies. There are so many things online and reinterpretations through different remixes, encouraging other people to do remixes. The code organ is just a reinterpretation of tones that we produced in our own way and see how that can be different and lead to something.

Ira, you mentioned in an interview that you like being un-definable and in a place where you can kind of do whatever you want. Is this still possible in today´s music business?

Ira: I like to think so. People get very connected to certain imagery and I think that people take definitely ownership of bands and what those bands mean to them. I reckon it is possible though to continually challenge what people´s perceptions of you are. You can achieve this by not making the same album over and over again, not relying on the same artwork, not stagnating in the same place for too long. I´m of the opinion that this is the healthiest way to go forward without wanting to shoot yourself in the face. It´s up to us to continually challenge ourselves as well as to continually challenge the people who are around us because people are gonna get bored. They might get bored before I get bored.

Is there a certain scene in New York you feel belonging to?

Ira: I don´t know if there´s a music scene that we belong to. I don´t think there is. We have a large group of friends. You know music scenes are what journalists turn them into. Of all my friends´ bands that I´ve heard journalists write about, emphasizing that there exists a Brooklyn scene, I don´t think a lot of them sound so much alike. I definitely live in a very supportive environment, an environment full of people challenging each other that´s very competitive. If that´s a scene, then so be it. I don´t believe there is specific genre of music that is being created right now. However, there certainly always is an attitude in New York, it´s a very artistic and competitive place. I love it because of this. Ines Punessen

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