Music

Track Of The Week: "Shades" by Yellow Ostrich

by Chris Budd

There’s nothing better than it being a Friday and hearing new music from a band you’re a fan of. Today, I put Yellow Ostrich back into my own rotation with their new song “Shades,” off the bands upcoming new album Cosmos, due February 25 on Barsuk.

The band took an interesting approach leading up to recording this album. Singer/guitarist Alex Schaaf moved into the band’s Brooklyn practice space and immersed himself in the study of astronomers such as Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, while keeping up his day job of digitizing vintage home films. The next nine months had Schaaf exploring the depths of the galaxy from a tiny windowless room, with synthetically altered lighting to reflect the arrival and passing of daylight each morning and night. Meanwhile, 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.

Channeling these experiences into an album brings us Cosmos, a record that borrows its title from Sagan’s 1980 PBS series and expands on the bands’ guitar-driven alt-rock with dreamy electronic arrangements to mirror the mood of Schaaf and Tapper’s retreats away from the everyday world.

I’m stoked to hear the record. Have a listen to “Shades.”