Talk about an all-star cast: Yeasayer co-founder and multi-instrumentalist Anand Wilder and longtime friend and composer Maxwell Kardon have announced the completion of a new musical featuring fellow bandmates Ira Wolf Tuton and Chris Keating, James Richardson (MGMT), Christopher Powell and Ryan Kattner (Man Man), Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend, Discovery), K Ishibashi (Kishi Bashi, of Montreal, Jupiter One), Haley Dekle (Dirty Projectors), and more.
According to the press release, Break Line The Musical “harkens back to rock concept albums of the early 70′s,” exploring “the classic arc of lost love, betrayal, and pride,” and is based on “a labor conflict in a Western Pennsylvania coal town” that the duo’s fathers had discovered in “an old folk song taught in Quaker schools in the 1950s.”
Conceived six years ago, Wilder’s project began to take shape in between Yeasayer albums and is reminiscent of his band’s debut LP, with a lighter, springier version of All Hour Cymbals’ freakier folksy vibe. Taking inspiration from The Kinks and The Byrds, the musical puts a contemporary twist on a classic art form.
Ahead of Break Line’s release this July 15th on Secretly Canadian (July 14th, rest of the world via Mute), Wilder and Kardon have given us a small taste of what’s to come with ‘Wedding Day,’ a sleepy track that begins with children’s laughter and reversed guitar strums before Wilder’s croons raise the tempo into full-blown folk-pop festivity.
Originally published on The Music Ninja