Features
YOUNG AMERICANS
YACHT and Mika Miko make the end of the world even weirder
YACHT started as the acronymic pen name (Young Americans Challenging High Technology) for Jona Bechtolt, then beating up a MIDI controller and a PowerBook while screaming out Scout Niblett covers and Donnie Darko references. Back in 2004, his only record was Super Warren MMIV: ambient noise and clever break-up songs like “I Asked If We Could Have Sex One Last Time,” where the only the lyrics are “What. A. Stupid. Thing. To. Do.”
Then Bechtolt lost the acronym (it’s just a boat now), programmed beats for K Records standby the Blow and vigorously increased his Web presence by co-creating Internet fads like Ultimate Blogger (a blog-based reality show); Flickr Blockrs (black bar glasses designed to keep your face off the Internet); and, most recently, the AirMail, a manila envelope-style carrying case specifically designed for the MacBook Air’s sleek body. His music now is weirder top-40-worship computer pop, but executed with just as much professionalism as the pop/hip-hop heavyweights he’s obviously listening to.
Bechtolt’s most recent full-length, 2007’s I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real included “See a Penny (Pick it Up),” which captures that radio-ready feel perfectly: a sliding one-note guitar hook combined with hip-hop drum programming, falsetto singing and a video with Bechtolt wandering around Portland dressed as an enormous penny.
He’s said in past interviews that he started out playing in grunge bands as a kid. When he switched out instruments for a computer, his main aim was take the “grunge spirit” and put it through the computer. But with the exception of a one-off glitch release made entirely of chopped up Nirvana tracks, there’s no strong ’90s influence on the surface.
Maybe “spirit” rears its head in weird ways?
Mika Miko recalls Los Angeles’ dark Carter/Reagan years: double-digit inflation, threats of gas rationing and the debut of Suburbia and Repo Man. Again, we’re approaching the end times—the collector’s edition of Repo Man just came out a couple of years ago—and Mika Miko complements that desperate American state of mind perfectly. Their Kill Rock Stars-released full-length C.Y.S.L.A.B.F. (mysterious acronym that may or may not stand for “Can You Stay Longer And Butt Fuck”?) still resonates nervously like Red Cross or Essential Logic.
Starting out in high school as a self-described thrash band playing backyards—they called it the Dead Banana Ladies—they were more or less background noise: “We would play to like 20 people who would just dance around,” said singer and guitarist Jennifer Clavin in an interview. “It wasn’t like they wanted to buy our music.”
After a car accident involving bass player Jessie Clavin, the band broke up and reformed later as five-piece Mika Miko (Jenna Thornhill singing and playing sax, Katelyn Hall on drums and Michelle Suarez on guitar) and before long became a fixture at downtown LA’s the Smell. Their live set adds in keyboards, dancing, giant inflatable SoCo bottles, and a re-wired telephone turned into a microphone, rendering the voice unintelligible but the message clear: We’re all gonna die, and we’re going to have fun doing it.
YACHT WITH MIKA MIKO SAMUELI THEATER AT THE ORANGE COUNTY PERFORMING ARTSCENTER | 600 TOWN CENTER DR | COSTA MESA 92626 | 714.556.2787 | OCPAC.COM | THURS 8PM | $10-30 | ALL AGES
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