Even when he's surrounded, solitude seems to suit Yellow Ostrich's Alex Schaaf. Strange Land-- Yellow Ostrich's first as a trio-- finds Schaaf running marathons, taking late night drives, occupying his bedroom, alone with everyone. Nearly every lyric begins with a lonesome-sounding "I" that suggests all the time Schaaf's spent in his own head; the ones that don't mostly opt for a distant "you," a direct address that still feels separated by the crackle of cellphone static or that anticipatory beat between texts. "I am the elephant king/ But I am lonely," an unusually metaphorical Schaaf lets go around Strange Land's one-minute mark, right as new bandmates Michael Tapper and Jon Natchez tumble into the frame. Schaff's a lonely soul, but on Strange Land, he's in good company.
The addition of drummer Tapper and jack-of-all-trades Natchez has opened up Yellow Ostrich's sound considerably. Natchez's subtle instrumental flourishes color in the spaces Yellow Ostrich's debut, The Mistress, drawing stark lines through, while Tapper's alternately tricky and tender rhythms help push along Schaaf's not-infrequent compositional shifts. He's still quite fond of the long, slow build, but Schaaf's songs have grown impressively dexterous, nimbly hopping from aching verse to pleading chorus while sidestepping overarrangement or stumbling constructions. Natchez's swaths of strings and hints of woodwind complement Schaaf's pleading, barely post-adolescent vocals particularly well, lending just the right kind of gravity to Schaff's effusive emoting without standing in its way.
This newfound musical sophistication's started to creep into Schaaf's lyrics, but only just. "I want your love," goes the chorus of "I Want Yr Love"; "I got no time for you," he repeats, with a kind of conflicted desperation in his throat, on "I Got No Time For You". I haven't sleuthed out his DOB or anything, but Schaaf certainly seems young; save the daydreamy "Elephant King", his lyrics have the sort of diaristic, subtlety-be-damned feeling of those late teenage years when a curfew-skirting late-night drive home from a girlfriend's house feels like the kind of thing somebody ought to write a song about. The 29-year-old, tax-paying, catfood-buying me finds some of Schaaf's lyrical directness a bit pat, but the 19-year-old version-- as prone to bold declarations and romanticizing heartbreak as Schaaf-- would've lapped this stuff right up. Schaaf's coming live and direct from that age where you've finally seen enough to realize you haven't seen very much at all. "I read about places I'll never see/ I sing about things that I'll never be," he sings on "Wear Suits", a missive from the mind of a guy who's slowly settling into his own place in the world.
And Strange Land still finds Schaaf and co. with plenty to figure out. Natchez and Tapper, steady hands that they are, feel like session men as much as proper bandmates; their subtlety's appreciated during the quieter moments, but the high drama of certain songs could very well prove dizzying were these arrangements a bit bolder. And Schaaf could probably stand to have his heart stepped on a couple-three more times to chase some of the cuddliness out of his lyrics; when "Marathon Runner" kicks off with a story about telling a friend to "give up on her dreams" (which, Schaaf admits, was "mean"), no one north of voting age could be blamed for sprinting towards the skip button. But what Schaff's everyloner routine lacks in subtlety, it makes up in a certain fraught, occasionally uncomfortable relatability. Anyone who's ever spent hours on the phone or drove hundreds of miles in their car just to connect with somebody, anybody-- and who hasn't?-- will hear a little of themselves in Strange Land and, if only for a second, feel a little less alone.
