Terrorbird

Where do YACHT songs live? Is it the files and folders of a computer that they call home? Are they burrowed inside Jona Bechtolt's body, clicking from synapse to synapse? Or are they everywhere, all at once, rushing out from your headphones and into your heart, like a high-five or a hug from someone you haven't seen in years?

YACHT is the full-time project of The Blow's Jona Bechtolt, whose production skills on the breakout album Paper Television -- a record that grabbed top spots on year-end lists, in Moms' car stereos, and top-dog music blogs alike -- were lauded by Pitchfork reviewers as "a brilliant and versatile grab bag of popular culture, equal parts Missy Elliott-style chart rap and Yaz'n'Soft Cell-like new wave keyboard pop, all shook up and spit out sideways."

YACHT shows are uncluttered, inspiring sessions of improbable dance moves and synchronized crowd-waving; the songs shudder happily into the air, and any relationship to "laptop music" is shattered by Bechtolt's own strain of shamanistic bombast.
The songs that make up YACHT's I Believe in You. Your Magic is Real. (MAR040) travel well; they're wide and warm-hearted, not unlike Bechtolt himself, bouncing without pretension from iPod to turntable, as buoyant and easy in a middle schooler's bedroom as they are echoing across a huge crowd, pouring from a jukebox, or woven thoughtfully into a mix tape.

What makes these songs so accessible -- apart from their undeniable vigor, or their fractured, crystalline pop sensibility -- is the strength of their objective. Behind the beats and the choruses, which come from left-field and bloom into frenetic dance breaks, are big ideas about how positive thinking, optimism, and luck can replace blind faith in a world without a lot of white gloves, wands, or magic.

Bechtolt has been a promiscuous genre-smasher since his adolescence, when he decided that playing drums in the touring punk band he formed with his older brother was more worthwhile than attending a single day of high school. He's plied his unique breed of laptop wizardry and grunge intuition to endless collaborations, both as drummer and producer, with west coast mainstays like Panther, Little Wings, Mt. Eerie, Bobby Birdman, Devendra Banhart, and E*Rock.

I Believe in You. Your Magic is Real. is a collection of songs committed to record, but they are not limited by it; if the anthemic choruses and stuttering beats are the protons and neutrons, then it's the ideas that make up the nuclei -- those spinning building blocks of a musical universe, where the real magic, Bechtolt urges, is what we're made of.