As opposed to the second cousin of Vampire Weekend and MGMT I was expecting, Brooklyn’s Yeasayer have produced an album that sounds a lot like the members spent a weekend holed up in a cabin with a fat bag of peyote and every Mollie Ringwald movie ever produced. The scenes of classic 80’s movies stereotypes brought to mind by sophomore effort Odd Blood are so vivid that in lieu of a review, here’s a song-by-song summary of Yeasayer’s yet unproduced Say Anything sequel. For continuity’s sake, slight liberty has been taken with the actual order of songs.
1. "Ambling Amp": The camera pans over a high school lawn crowded with people, clearly divided by clique. We see the stoners, the Goths, the cheerleaders, and the nameless rabble of peons commonly referred to as “losers.” The camera zooms in on one loser as he’s given a particularly vicious noogie by a generic jock. We are thus introduced to our hero.
2. " I Remember": The high school cafeteria. A beam of sunlight shines off the feathered bangs of our hero’s shimmering, unattainable pubescent love interest. She flips her hair over her shoulder in slow motion, throws her head back and laughs as our hero looks on in undisguised awe from the loser’s lunch table.
3. " Rome":The sexually precocious protagonist and his slightly less attractive but hilarious best friend hatch a harebrained scheme to land our guy the girl of his dreams, involving showing up to school as a suave French exchange student, Pierre. “Rome” is the montage of them preparing mustachioed costumes, reading English to French dictionaries, and flexing their comically puny muscles in front of mirrors.
4. "Love Me Girl": Pierre’s introduction to the student body occurs at the highly anticipated homecoming dance. He walks in, collar flipped up, mustache in place and performs an amazingly choreographed dance (with the help of years of ballet lessons, a source of endless torment in his former life as a loser) that ends with an epic split in front of his dream girl. Whispers of “Who is that?” echo throughout the gymnasium.
5. "Madder Red": The love interests’ beefcake “boyfriend” sees Pierre eyein’ up his lady and challenges him to an afterschool showdown. Pierre realizes that the wise old man he thought was just a friendly janitor was was actually former heavyweight champion of the US, and enlists his help to train for the fight. “Madder Red” shows a montage of training and meditation techniques the janitor imparts upon the hero somehow within an afternoon’s time. He kicks beefcakes’ ass, at the last possible second of course.
6. "O.N.E.": The requisite Friday night party at the rich kids (whose parents have inevitably left town). The hero realizes that people are expecting both him and Pierre to show up, and a night full of near misses and hilarious costume changes ensues. At least one time, the best friend must painfully rip off the moustache Pierre mistakenly left on.
7. "Strange Reunions": The love interest, attracted by Pierre’s unbridled masculinity, invites him for a night time frolic in the town lake. “Strange Reunions” narrates his fumbling advances.
8. "Mondegreen": The harebrained scheme inevitably goes horrifically wrong, causing a scene involving escaped farm animals, a midnight high school break-in, and some excuse for Pierre and his love to end up hiding in the girl’s locker room. This song frames their chase by a comically bumbling security guard throughout the deserted high school halls.
9. "Grizelda": Our hero and his lady stand in the middle of a suburban street just before dawn after escaping a fate of almost certain detention. Pierre’s fake moustache is falling off and his beret lies askew on the top of his head. Our hero tells his lady everything as he averts his eyes, expecting her to leave and never speak to him again. Instead, touched by his sincerity, she tells him that she fell in love with the person he is on the inside. They kiss as the sun rises.
10. "The Children": This disjointed art-tune keys up as the credits begin to roll over the screen.
THE END
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