YACHT

YACHT, one of Jona Bechtolt’s many personas, is an act given to deceptively sloppy, poppy sounds that slot somewhere between art-rock and electronic dance music. Certain songs from its 2007 album, I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real, bear the disparate stamps of Animal Collective and LCD Soundsystem, and it’s easy to draw a timely lineage tracing the same shape as MGMT, High Places, and other quasi-electronic acts that broke in recent years. The LCD link sealed when James Murphy’s DFA label signed YACHT, releasing 2009’s Mystery Lights, an album that slinks and sways in intriguing ways. 2011’s Shangri-La features the “post-apocalyptic fight song” “Dystopia (The Earth Is On Fire),” among other spastic dance beats centered loosely on themes of societies both idealistic and crumbling.

Updated 02/08/2012