"Please Bring Me To Safety" by Yes We Mystic - art rock on high and doppelgangers

Please Bring Me to Safety by indie art rockers Yes We Mystic is instantly progressively drawn and drawing outside the lines. There are elements that veer into overarching dramatics (but in a good way) blending prog rock, avant garde and indie rock tones that almost spill into emo in that theater of rock sort of way. Looking at things within the artifice of theater translated in wild ways on their latest album "Ten Seated Indians" where music and art and theater blended so much so that the idea of doppelgangers arose. Curious and brilliant like the band's music itself. Delve into the notes below.

Yes We Mystic is Adam Fuhr (guitar, vocals), Keegan Steele (synthesizer, mandolin, vocals), Jodi Plenert (keyboards, cello, bass guitar, vocals), Jensen Fridfinnson (violin, synthesizer, guitar), Jordon Ottenson (drum kit, electronic drums).

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Robb Donker

PRESS NOTES:

“It’s about memory, it’s about false memory and different ways in which we can remember the same event, see the same event, distort the same event in our mind and how it can change who we are. That’s what the album is about lyrically, and how it was made sonically as well; we tried to cloud the origins of what you’re hearing in the instruments,” says vocalist and guitarist Adam Fuhr.

To help accomplish this, the band created a massive art project in tandem with the recording of the album, which includes five more band members who make up an alternate version of Yes We Mystic. They will do interviews, have their own photoshoots and they will perform; the other Yes We Mystic is, essentially, a dual face of the band.

“In music, in art, what the creator asserts is true becomes true to some extent in the context of that art. Our question is, how far can this be pushed?” explains Fuhr.

The creation of Ten Seated Figures was different for the band in more ways than one; Yes We Mystic signed to DevilDuck records in 2018, which has given them more resources to execute big plans they’ve had in the works for years. In addition, Ten Seated Figures also marks Fuhr’s debut as a producer.

In the studio, Fuhr had to learn how to produce and engineer as the band was writing the record; many moments on the album were captured as they were conceived. And though Fuhr took the helm as producer, the band flew to Montreal to have the record mixed by beloved producer/engineer Marcus Paquin, who has worked with indie-music royalty such as Arcade Fire, The National, and Hey Rosetta!.  

Ten Seated Figures is the culmination of a years-long creative burst; one that embraces the band’s designation as “art-pop transformers” but also turns things on their head; one that holds surprises for listeners and will make them question much of what they see and hear; one that has produced Yes We Mystic’s best work to date.