Motorpsycho • Yay! [LP]

After a series of epic, sprawling and headphones-friendly albums, Motorpsycho is back with a short, reasonably pop-formatted and intimate album of mainly acoustically based songs. For once playing the game instead of trying to reinvent it, this 10-song album of tunes is clearly a reaction in some way to too much architecture and too many grand visions, and dials the music down to more comprehensive and digestible sizes than have been the band's métier lately.

Motorpsycho have always been about the balance between hard and soft, electric and acoustic, big and small, light and shade … and now the time was right for a lighter touch to balance the scales. Yang to the Yin of earlier, more epic works (N.O.X., The Crucible, and Chariot Of The Sun), this is also an album that is relatively easy on the ears, and that actually works really well with a cup of tea at noon.

Yay! was produced by Reine Fiske and Lars Fredrik Swahn (Dungen, Melody’s Echo Chamber, The Amazing et al), and their production work brings a sweet Swedish psych edge to the album, giving it a lysergic tinge and charging what could easily have been a bit too "backporchy" with an electric vibe that lifts it out of the often staid singer/songwriter genre, but still keeping the intimacy intact.

While as ever clearly drawing on inspiration from late 60s/early 70s heroes, Yay! is as indebted to earlier iterations of Motorpsycho as anything else, and will be recognizable to fans of vintage Motorpsychodelia as well as a breath of fresh air to newer Psychonauts that only ever heard the heavy progressive side of the band.

Reactions ranging from ‘WTF?’ to ‘Finally!’ are expected. Use your ears!

Keeping things unpredictable and weird since 1989, there is only one Motorpsycho.