Interview: Yeasayer's Chris Keating

Yeasayer play the Music Hall of Williamsburg tonight and tomorrow. Both shows are sold out.

"Some people think we're like a prog band or something and I'm like, 'No, we've always been making pop music.'"

Chris Keating, the man with the moustache and the panda bear.

After fourteen months and countless miles of touring in support of their All Hour Cymbals debut, Brooklyn's Yeasayer, a pop band oft-accused of being a prog band, will start a sabbatical long overdue following two sold-out shows this Friday and Saturday at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.

We talked to co-founder Chris Keating about what he's experienced on his year plus journey, and how it might result in shorter songs and a slightly less apocalyptic sound for his band's next album. --Rob Trucks

Let me ask you a couple of short answer questions first to get us started. Tell me one thing that you've never ever done before in your life.

Well, I'd have to say, Go to church.

Never?

Well, not really. You know, I'm half-Jewish and half-Catholic and I kind of just avoided the whole thing. I feel like that might not be true because I think I maybe went on a Christmas once to check out some singing. I've been in church. I've been in church for a lot of different kind of musical events, but I've never kind of gone on a Sunday morning in a traditional way.

Okay. Tell me something you've done once and one time only.

Gotten a tattoo.

Then you've got to tell me what the tattoo is and where it's located.

It's on my forearm, and it's a Maryland blue crab. I kind of just wanted one to remind me of home because I grew up in Baltimore, kind of on the Chesapeake Bay, and we ate crabs growing up and the supply in the Chesapeake Bay has kind of been slowly diminished and I just felt like . . . Actually I had an ex-girlfriend who did tattoos and when we broke up she said she'd give me one as a kind of a memento to remember her by.

That's a good story. Have you ever regretted it?

No, no, no. I sort of feel like you're supposed to . . . Like, they're stupid. Tattoos are really dumb. So like I went into it with the idea of it as something that you're kind of supposed to not regret, but supposed to think is kind of silly, you know.