last night's gig

The Crowning of Yeasayer

Not pictured: slacker, IT guy.

Last night — in their second sold-out show of the week, which officially marked the release of the exuberant Odd Blood, a key document of 2010-era Brooklyn art rock — Yeasayer played Music Hall of Williamsburg. If they’re the band of the moment, we can only hope for more moments like these. On the Brooklyn-arty scale, the band falls somewhere between Animal Collective (popular but often inscrutable) and MGMT (purely hedonistic at their best). It’s a good place to be. Quite literally, groovy. And live, their idiosyncrasies (highly processed vocals, oddly layered rhythms) came together like flower arrangements — over ribcage-collapsing bass.

The band brought their own beautiful light show, with the boxes holding up their keyboards and the screens at the rear of the stage flashing a rainbow pulse. The five dudes themselves had a sort of Village People vibe, but updated for the here and now: gym rat, slacker, beardo, rock star, IT guy. And a big happy family they were, keeping everything perfectly in sync as they picked up and put down instruments, turned to different keyboards, drummed with machine beats, and traded vocals. Especially when the tempos slowed, half the fun was trying to figure out who was responsible for which noise. Or perhaps that was just the contact high. But as elaborate as the music was, there was always the bass — and of course, for the more visual folks, the rock star and his friends.

The Crowning of Yeasayer