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Wow, they sound great! I think i see what some of you mean regarding a certain lack of punch on the snare, yet it’s great how he straightens matters a bit. Really great footage! Enjoy the Trondheim gig everyone!
Thanks! We’ll see how things change after the next drummer swap :) I for one have absolutely no problem with a 20+ song setlist and a little more 4/4 measure.
Two more Cents:
– Love that Snah is very present on the Album
– really like the combination of acoustic guitars and gently subdued fuzz bass…not for the sake of being brutal but just that little edge it needs to not make it too tame
– as someone mentioned earlier, i also get a late 90/00s vibe from itWow, i didnt expect it to be rather sparse. After reading who would be involved in the making, i expected it to be more dungen-like psychedelia/eclectic kammermusik. It is really great. The last albums were more from the head, this is more from the belly and the Heart.
Regarding fade-outs: I also hated them in the past. Thought of them that the artist was being too lazy or uninspired to craft a proper ending. Now i really love them if they fit the song. There is something bittersweet about it….like looking back at your love when the train departs ;)
Rating: 12 out of 15
According to Hans Magnus “Snah” Ryan, MOTORPSYCHO currently have the feeling that they have just started making music because they still have so much to say – mind you after a good 30-year band history! With their new album, the Norwegians show another facet of their shapeshifting self and, to a certain extent, also put up an alternative to their last two or three long players, which were thoughtful and tied to complex content concepts. The short and concise title “Yay!” says nothing direct and yet says a lot: The material is comparatively uncomplicated and prompted its creators to make this exclamation precisely because they had so much fun writing and recording the predominantly acoustic and traditionally song-oriented songs. The barely expansive tracks are focused on the lyrics and kept in the best singer-songwriter tradition, although the musicians’ Psych-Prog background still shines through.
“Yay!” bursting with different flavors, is colorful like its cover – ‘Cold & Bored’ comes in two parts, Mediterranean or Latin-like, ‘Sentinels’ mostly instrumental (the band still remains committed because they couldn’t jam freely while working on the songs ) and ‘ Dank State ‘ buoyantly sunny in the spirit of the Beatles’ psychedelic pop at their peak. In keeping with this, most of the texts tell more or less banal everyday stories with a wink and quite serious overtones; Brittle melodies and percussion elements are among the mainstays of the album, for example in ‘W.C.A’ or the summery finale ‘The Rapture’. The only heavy rocker ‘Hotel Daedalus’ – with ‘Kashmir’ flair (Led Zeppelin) – is at the extreme end of the range of MOTORPSYCHO anno 2023, the weird love song ‘Loch Meaninglessness & the Mull of Dull’ and the melancholic ballad ‘ Real Again (Norway shrugs and stays at home)´ on the other. CONCLUSION: With “Yay!” MOTORPSYCHO go a little way back into the song-like years of their work and present a basically acoustic album that Reine Fiske and Lars Fredrik Swahn (Dungen and others) refined with a wonderfully intimate production. The result is, in the best sense of the word, quirky folk-prog-pop for a wider audience than usual, although the band’s handwriting remains recognizable at all times.
Really cool twist as a kraut tune. That riff is just eternal. It was the first i learned on bass after i discovered MP and noticed that using a distortion pedal on bass works pretty dann well
That riff loop, that celestial transition with the melody notes and that massive final chord…..the definition of epic music
7/10
Break from shift work
The Norwegians from Motorpsycho have always been busy. Much to the delight of their loyal fans, they reliably present album after album and, despite all the quantity, don’t forget the quality. From 2019, the band even increased their productivity again, starting with “The Crucible” a stringent annual rhythm was struck. This definitely requires discipline from the inclined audience, because the full processing of their works does not succeed on the side. So now: “Yay!” as the successor to the fine predecessor “Ancient astronauts”, which tended towards the overflowing format. The album contained only four songs, which nevertheless made it to almost an impressive three-quarters of an hour. “Yay!” goes a different way: Motorpsycho shook themselves up and threw off a lot. What has remained: its great class. “Cold & bored” and “Sentinels” at the start present the band resolutely in an acoustic guise, which isn’t bad news despite all the reduction. Of course, Motorpsycho basically live from the shift work, when the songs unfold more and more powerfully and sometimes almost end up in chaos before everything is brought together again. But even this reserved, completely simple (and certainly not simple-minded) expression of her work has its undeniable appeal. “Patterns” as the first big highlight on “Yay!” but then also shows directly that Bent Sæther, who wrote all the songs, doesn’t like to exaggerate with the reticence. Later on, it gets very intimate when Sæther takes a look at the Corona period in “Real again (Norway shrugs and stays at home)” on the basis of a guitar that is only used hesitantly: “Now we’re hanging out in different rooms / All pretending to cherish meetings on Zoom / Supposed to strengthen all our ties / But your faces all seem demoralized / I can see the light growing dim in your eyes.” The heaviness of the content and the musical lightness are brought into perfect harmony here. Sæther and his comrades-in-arms continue to creatively live out the joy of variety. “Hotel Daedalus”, for example, comes very close to the typical Motorpsycho sound in the second part of the album and can be described as almost overflowing in comparison to the rest of the work, not only because of its length of almost eight minutes.
“Yay!” is by the way the first album after the Norwegians announced the departure of drummer Tomas Järmyr. However, he is still involved here, as are Reine Fiske and Lars Fredrik Swahn from time to time. At the very end, in the final “The rapture”, Motorpsycho sum up the album: “Days are getting longer, summer’s almost here / I thank my guardian angels we survived another year / When summer rolls around again / I’m gonna lay my head back in the grass / And count my blessings one by one, and hope it won’t be my last.” Summers come, summers go – and Motorpsycho just keep doing what they do best: reliably great art.
Horribly written, but hey….9/10! :)
Translation of said promising announcement:
Hello Norway! 🇳🇴
In the autumn we will bring the legends @reinisen and @olafmosesolsen with us and come around and play for you!Since #Yay! stayed as it was (it’s just to be happy!), there will probably be a bit more acoustic guitar and far more singing than there has been for a while on this round. Of course, we intend to rock your shoes too, but we’re really looking forward to showing off the slightly more concrete side of the Motorpsychodelic universe again. Yin AND yang! ☯️
#snah is – as you have probably caught on to – in hard training, and is constantly observed running around the local environment with a mysterious red suitcase. Which, regardless of its meaning, bodes well for the form! 😮💨#differentstrokesfordifferentfolks
This will be fun!
(let me daydream a bit plz)