Yacht / Shangri-la

DFA

Shangri-La, YACHT’s second album for DFA Records and the follow-up to their critically acclaimed full-length, See Mystery Lights, is the duo’s most thematically ambitious work to date, showcasing an exponential evolution in songwriting and sharp, surreal hooks. When the darkly anthemic track, “Dystopia (The Earth Is on Fire),” was released digitally in April, YACHT offered a window onto the new album. Members Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans described the track as an “apocalyptic fight song, a cautionary tale, a science-fiction story for our particular eco-sociopolitical landscape.” These themes are echoed throughout the conceptually unified Shangri-La. In contrast to the meditative, mantra-esque quality of their debut, Shangri-La is a narrative work. The album explores mankind’s eternal pursuit of Utopia with a soundtrack comprised of compelling pop melodies, fiercely druggy grooves and an endlessly diverse canon of influences. The message here is that the future is a blank slate upon which anything can be imposed. Shangri-La is literally YACHT’s idea of Utopia: a place made of songs. Never a band to stay in one place sonically, visually or philosophically, YACHT transformed themselves, taking advantage of a proper studio for the very first time and using more live instrumentation than ever before. Recording in the West Texas desert without an engineer, the duo employed a kaleidoscope of genres—ranging from disco to psychedelia, from krautrock to punk—all culminating in pure pop. Shangri-La was performed, mixed, and recorded by Bechtolt and Evans themselves. The Utopian illustration featured in the album’s encyclopedic cover design was painted by iconic science fiction illustrator Jim Burns, three-time Hugo Award-winner.

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