Yacht – I believe in you. Your magic is real.

 

Jona Bechtolt (aka Yacht, part of the Blow) is getting a ton of praise for the new Yacht album I Believe in you. Your magic is real. I don’t want to be that review guy who says that it sucks because it’s cool to say things suck if other people like it… but honestly, I don’t know what to think about it. There are some pretty cool compositions and use of instruments which lead to big, powerful songs, like the track “If music could cure all that ails you”. But on the other hand there are some really cheesy attempts at dance music like the Night Rider themed track “See a Penny (Pick it up)”, and the cheerleading shouts in “We’re always waiting.” It is kind of like he wrote half the album for high school dances and the other half for people like me who are looking for a new, creative use of electronic instruments.

Yacht is very consistent throughout the album with the midi voices he chooses and a chorus hook that is almost always spoken multiple times. For my weekday job, I do work study at a college campus and mess around with Garageband because there is nothing else to do and I noticed a lot of the same samples. It’s a great program with lots of cool sounds, but personally I don’t think I could write a tune with them and not do any alterations to the tones. But I guess that’s beside the point.

One of the strongest tracks on the album is “Drawing in the Dark” which offers a creative use of a film reel sample and is accompanied by multiple voices, then progresses to a Screw type vocal alteration with a dance beat background. The following track “It’s coming to get you” is a pretty upbeat standard pop tune that actually sounds like a song. It is songs like this that make the Yacht album accessible to people outside the dance party scene. Another highlight is the track “I believe in you,” which a nice song with a bunch of rhetorical questions and guitar.

I think there are some real strong points to the album as well as some very weak spots. It is easily one of those albums that you would hear once and never think to pick up again. Sincerely, I think that if he focused on the more melodic parts of the songs and developed the songs into something stronger with a definite center, it wouldn’t be one of those albums. It just seems to lack that special something that allows the listener to make a connection to it. (Unless you are one of the zillion people he thanks personally on track “Your magic is real.”)

Yacht – I believe in you. Your magic is real.
2007 – Marriage Records

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