Yeasayer’s third album Fragrant World is out now and Cheese on Toast took the opportunity to catch up with Anand on the phone to chat about the new record.
He was excited to hear I was calling from New Zealand – recalling that they had a “much publicized great time” here.
To my ears, there seems to be an over-riding story arc to Yeasayers albums and I posed the question to Anand but he says :
“I think it’s it’s own definitive piece; there’s always going to be connections because it’s the same people writing the songs and the lyrics and teh same sort of sensibilities informing the editing process”, although he did concede, “I think we’re still interested in certain themes of futurism and mortality”.
Mortality certainly does seem to recur as a theme in Fragrant World – the latest single is Longevity and lead single Henrietta was named after Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman who was the unwitting source of cells (from her cancerous tumor) which were cultured to create an immortal cell line for medical research.
“(We’re) interested in human life or afterlife and the commodification of Henrietta’s cancer cells which were used to advance science but none of the family or those close to her received any of the money they were (also) turned into”
But it’s not all doom and gloom and mortality – Anand does a really terrible NZ accent which he performs on the phone recording (he sound’s Australian, of course) and also drops a big hint about the possibility of coming down this way early next year!
Listen to the call here
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