This week New York band Yellow Ostrich announced Cosmos, its new album dueFeb. 25 on Barsuk. The first single “Shades” is streaming right here and the band also unveiled its first batch of 2014 tour dates (see below).
Before starting on songwriting for Yellow Ostrich’s latest album, singer/guitarist Alex Schaaf moved into the band’s Brooklyn practice space and immersed himself in the study of such astronomers as Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. Keeping up his day job of digitizing vintage home films by day, Schaaf devoted the next 9 months to exploring the depths of the galaxy from a tiny windowless room, whose lighting he synthetically altered to reflect the arrival and passing of daylight each morning and night. Around the same time, Yellow Ostrich drummer/percussionist Michael Tapper ventured into the infinite in a much more literal sense by departing on a sailing trip from Mexico to Hawaii that left him out at sea for nearly a month. Borrowing its title from Sagan’s 1980 PBS series, Cosmos expands Yellow Ostrich’s intensely guitar-driven alt-rock with dreamy electronic arrangements to mirror the mood of Schaaf and Tapper’s retreats away from the everyday world. While the album embodies a sense of both wonder and isolation, Yellow Ostrich’s refined melodies and dense yet delicate sonic textures make Cosmos as powerfully intimate as it is dynamic.
“Something I really like about the Carl Sagan way of thinking is how it’s a very un-ironic and sincere amazement at how the world works,” says Schaaf, who began Yellow Ostrich as a solo project at age 21. “One of the main things I was thinking about in writing this album is how to take that viewpoint and bring it into real-world life,” he adds. “It’s one thing to be reading all these books and watching all these movies in a very small room, or-as Michael did-to go out and live under the stars for a while. But trying to inject that pure amazement into day-to-day living in a big city is something completely different.”
02/27 Allston MA – Great Scott
03/03 Washington DC – DC9
03/04 Raleigh NC – Kings
03/05 Atlanta GA – The Earl
03/06 Nashville TN – The High Watt
03/07 Birmingham AL – The Bottletree
03/08 New Orleans LA – Circle Bar
03/09 Houston TX – Fitzgerald’s
03/15 Scottsdale AZ – Pub Rock Live
03/16 San Diego CA – Casbah
03/18 Los Angeles CA – The Echo
03/19 San Francisco CA – Bottom of The Hill
03/21 Portland OR – Doug Fir Lounge
03/22 Seattle WA – Barboza
03/23 Vancouver BC – Media Club
03/25 Salt Lake City UT – Urban Lounge
03/26 Denver CO – Hi Dive
03/28 St. Paul MN – Turf Club
03/29 Madison WI – High Noon Saloon
03/30 Milwaukee WI – Turner Hall
03/31 Chicago IL – Schubas
04/01 Indianapolis IN – Do317 Lounge
04/03 Philadelphia PA – Boot & Saddle
04/04 New York NY – Bowery Ballroom
Cosmos
(Barsuk)
Street Date: Feb. 25, 2014