Yellow Ostrich announces new album, Cosmos, due in Feb. on Barsuk - stream the first single now

Yellow Ostrich announces new album, Cosmos, due in Feb. on Barsuk - stream the first single now  STREAM: "Shades" - SoundCloud / Noisey   This week New York band Yellow Ostrich announced Cosmos, its new album due Feb. 25 on Barsuk. The first single "Shades" is streaming right here and the band also unveiled its first batch of 2014 tour dates (see below).  Before starting on songwriting for Yellow Ostrich's latest album, singer/guitarist Alex Schaaf moved into the band's Brooklyn practice space and immersed himself in the study of such astronomers as Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. Keeping up his day job of digitizing vintage home films by day, Schaaf devoted the next 9 months to exploring the depths of the galaxy from a tiny windowless room, whose lighting he synthetically altered to reflect the arrival and passing of daylight each morning and night. Around the same time, Yellow Ostrich drummer/percussionist Michael Tapper ventured into the infinite in a much more literal sense by departing on a sailing trip from Mexico to Hawaii that left him out at sea for nearly a month. Borrowing its title from Sagan's 1980 PBS series, Cosmos expands Yellow Ostrich's intensely guitar- driven alt-rock with dreamy electronic arrangements to mirror the mood of Schaaf and Tapper's retreats away from the everyday world. While the album embodies a sense of both wonder and isolation, Yellow Ostrich's refined melodies and dense yet delicate sonic textures make Cosmos as powerfully intimate as it is dynamic. "Something I really like about the Carl Sagan way of thinking is how it's a very un- ironic and sincere amazement at how the world works," says Schaaf, who began Yellow Ostrich as a solo project at age 21. "One of the main things I was thinking about in writing this album is how to take that viewpoint and bring it into real-world life," he adds. "It's one thing to be reading all these books and watching all these movies in a very small room, or-as Michael did-to go out and live under the stars for a while. But trying to inject that pure amazement into day-to-day living in a big city is something completely different."   YELLOW OSTRICH 02/27 Allston MA - Great Scott 03/03 Washington DC - DC9 03/04 Raleigh NC - Kings 03/05 Atlanta GA - The Earl 03/06 Nashville TN - The High Watt 03/07 Birmingham AL - The Bottletree 03/08 New Orleans LA - Circle Bar 03/09 Houston TX - Fitzgerald's 03/15 Scottsdale AZ - Pub Rock Live 03/16 San Diego CA - Casbah 03/18 Los Angeles CA - The Echo 03/19 San Francisco CA - Bottom of The Hill 03/21 Portland OR - Doug Fir Lounge 03/22 Seattle WA - Barboza 03/23 Vancouver BC - Media Club 03/25 Salt Lake City UT - Urban Lounge 03/26 Denver CO - Hi Dive 03/28 St. Paul MN - Turf Club 03/29 Madison WI - High Noon Saloon 03/30 Milwaukee WI - Turner Hall 03/31 Chicago IL - Schubas 04/01 Indianapolis IN - Do317 Lounge 04/03 Philadelphia PA - Boot & Saddle 04/04 New York NY - Bowery Ballroom  TWITTER FACEBOOK