The word “yacht” conjures up images of boat shoes and champagne. Thus, by logical extension, it would be easy to believe that “yacht rock,” or a band by the name of YACHT, would play safe and uninteresting music. DFA artists YACHT (who actually got their name from an education program in Portland, Oregon) toyed with that innocuous perception by playing thirty seconds of a soft rock recording before their set started. Then the drumbeats kicked in, the lights came up and they blew that brief illusion to smithereens.
Additionally, YACHT proved that if they wanted us to dance, that they would do that as well. Although YACHT had, for six years, been the solo project of Jona Bechtolt and definitely is deeply rooted electro-pop (a subgenre that can make for a static live performance), singer Claire L. Evans had the Black Cat under her thumb from song one. Proclaiming herself a god and the audience as her children, she alternately writhed on the stage floor and laid her hands on the foreheads of the audience, as if it were possible to cure what ailed humanity with tinny cowbell beats, swooning androgynous vocals and synth-constructed hooks. This was her room and she lorded over it.
“This is going to be a good show!” exclaimed Evans. “[Bechtolt] kept saying this, today, and he was right! D.C.!” shouted Evans, once it became clear that the entirety of the third-full Black Cat mainstage was at attention. This utter command of audience? Roughly two songs. Everyone on the floor was dancing before they even launched into “The Afterlife,” one of their bouncy hits from 2009’s See Mystery Lights, disproving the “D.C. crowds don’t dance” myth. (And really, how many times have we disproved this now?)
Furthermore, YACHT have effectively avoided the trap of other modern dance-y bands, wherein their music sounds like it came straight off of a new wave record (or off of a computer). There’s a little bit of new wave in there, sure, but there are also guitar lines that wouldn’t be out of place on a Faust record. There is some Talking Heads-esque dissonance and there are even lyrics lifted from a Judas Priest song…slowed from breakneck speed to a sexy jaunt. This mix of styles had become something very much their own and by the end of the first set, which closed with “Utopia” and “Psychic City (Voodoo City),” YACHT’s command of the night was complete.
