It's hard to believe in this age of exhaustive and exhausting music coverage, but there are still times when albums that could someday be hugely important slip through the cracks and all too quickly out of people's minds. The most glaring example of this injustice I can think of is Max Tundra's 2002 record Mastered by Guy at the Exchange, an album me and a small pocket of the Pitchfork hivemind is viciously in support of, even half a decade later. An absurdly inventive and manic piece of computerized composition, MBGATE seemed to be fanfare for the future of pop music, or at least the indie-prefixed strain thereof, where modern technology met playfully skewed catchiness. Yet the sound of lap-pop veered instead towards recapitulating synth-pop tropes and rutting in melancholy, and nobody seemed to notice Max Tundra's valiant efforts.
Jona Bechtolt, who records as all-caps YACHT when he's not half of the Blow, appears to have noticed, even if it took him until his third recording under the moniker to let it show. YACHT's first two albums, MEGA and Super Warren MMIV, were both middling endeavors of laptop navel-gazing, the kind of home-beat experimentation that has glutted the market for much of the mid-aughts. But on I Believe in You, Your Magic Is Real, Bechtolt appears to have remembered the MBGATE lesson that home computer music and poppy fun need not be mutually exclusive entities, freeing himself to produce an album that strives for, and fleetingly reaches, the unpredictable yet lovable heights of its ancestor.
Bechtolt isn't totally unfamiliar with the concept of injecting some computer embellishment into indie-ish songwriting, having performed similar duties as IT Guy for the Blow. But I Believe in You is another step beyond merely adding programming to Khaela Maricich's relatively straightforward tunes, occupying the same beat-prankster territory as Tundra while not drifting too far into the abrasiveness of breakcore. "We're Always Waiting" is a prime example, first toying with an 8-bit version of the "Time Is Tight" vamp, pausing mid-song for a tongue-in-cheek materialist cheerleader chant, and climaxing with a proggy astral synth being henpecked by ringtones and presets. "It's Coming to Get You" runs a similar path with a primal-punk drum foundation and cutesy woah-oh-oh backing vocals, while "See a Penny (Pick It Up)" puts Jamie Lidell-style falsetto faux-soul singing and a chugging guitar riff against a musical backdrop that changes every 30 seconds, finally exploding in a skittering-beat orgy.
All these experiments could easily sink under heavy pretensions (as one might argue the instrumental "If Music Could Cure All That Ails You" does), but Bechtolt lightens his ballast with a sense of humor throughout. It doesn't always work; introducing fellow laptoppers Eats Tapes for a "solo" halfway through "It's All the Same Price" is pretty funny, the chopped-and-screwed outro to "Drawing in the Dark" not so much. Occasionally Bechtolt's jokes don't just fizzle, they cross the line into outright annoyance, like the meta-aware "The Magic Beat" (basically Bechtolt singing about how awesome he is over a loop too busy to claim perfection) or the Kanye-esque shout-out speech of "Your Magic Is Real". But even the missteps are indicative of a playfulness lacking on previous YACHT efforts, a charismatic goofiness that pervades the music as well as the lyrics and interjections.
While I Believe in You, Your Magic Is Real doesn't approach the future-thrill that MBGATE gave a small portion of us five years back, it does at least thrive in its shadow, bursting with unique and catchy lap-pop with the best of intentions. Even its merely above-average success rate draws renewed attention to the promise of a true indie-pop/electronic hybrid, presenting both a rock-based sound with deemphasized guitar and fewer tired post-punk influences, and an electronic adventurism that doesn't come too unmoored from conventional song structure while retaining a playful unpredictability. YACHT may not be the innovative and distinctive force that Max Tundra proved himself to be, but as a willing disciple, he's wise enough to harvest in Tundra's fertile territory.
