Goodbye LSD. Hello XTC. If you were a fan of their debut, with all of its acidic hippie charm and worldly overtones, the first thought that will pop into your head after checking out the new Yeasayer album is "WTF?" The blog band that had people comparing them to the likes of early Brian Eno? and Talking Heads? will now have some hearing Depeche Mode and Erasure? in their sophomore album, Odd Blood. You will certainly notice the reinvention of their sound immediately upon first listen. The transition from "Red Cave" to "The Children" is an extreme departure and it was completely intentional.

Odd Blood was created in Woodstock inside a rented house with a makeshift studio and with a hard emphasis in upping the tempo from the jammy rhythm of All Hour Cymbals. The goal meant trading in their folksy analog production to more digitally oriented music-making. The album's opener, "The Children", is a dark and industrialized droning track replete with various Pro-Tools plug-ins. Oh, and the vocals are monotonously robotic. Odd Blood continues with its first single off the LP, "Ambling Alp", and switches gears even further for what will be the driving sonic theme for the remainder of the album: 80s wave and synthpop. And the music is not the only element to get a facelift as the vocals on Odd Blood are now more singular and highly pitched. When you hear Anand Wilder's croons on "Madder Red", it is reminiscent of vintage Martin Gore. The global chants and gospel melodies have been stripped down to bring pop vocals to the forefront and on "One", the chorus eventually breaks down into disco.

The lyrical theme has also taken a new path. Yeasayer questioned our place in the world on their previous album and in Odd Blood, they provide an answer: love. "I remember making love on Sunday/ bright floating hearts in a fresh cut of grass in May/ whoa," starts things off on "I Remember". Perhaps they haven't ditched the whole hippie vibe altogether.

For the band's followers, this collection of songs will no doubt hit you differently and Yeasayer will likely disappoint many who expected them to build upon its retro-trippy sound. Odd Blood is poppy, has cheesy lyrics and is saturated in electronica. But with that, Yeasayer's music becomes more relevant in the current indie market(at least for now). They've also achieved what they set out to do with an album that is more situated for the club than the campfire. Granted, there is not much cohesion between the two records but their identity may not be in crisis. What made Yeasayer so likable in their debut was that they threw caution to the wind and created a modern album around an antiquated sound. Odd Blood adheres to that same design and while both albums sound nothing alike, they still give us, in essence, the same soul of the band. And if Yeasayer is traveling through time, I suppose Grunge is next. WTF?