This album reminds me of driving. It was one of the first I listened to in my 5+1 disc changer in my 2002 VW Beetle, and the first album I loaded onto my Kubrick-style 3rd gen iPod. In that car, turned up, CD sound--it just filled the space, in the car, between my ears. It gave me a lot of heart, too. I'd listen to "I don't know how a man decides what's right for his own life" as I drove 45 minutes each way to a job I really needed to leave, and I'd drum that unbelieveable drum beat from "In the Morning of the Magicians" on the steering wheel while I sped down McCormick Boulevard. I remember a New Year's Eve show with this, the ultimate New Year's Eve band, and how still we found confetti in our apartment from that show in April of the new year. These guys knew how to bring it and they also knew how to dial it back, and I really think this album did an excellent job of curtailing the jammy weirdness and promoting the songcraft, themes of love and of actively living, and that incredible drumming of Drozd, into a poppier album than most of their career. Some of my favorite events growing up were things that I referred to as "pep rallies for yourself," and this album really does make you reflect but eventually celebrate, a process I'd say that Coyne pushed--for a while at least.
It's amazing what near-death can do to creativity. Here's a man who made this weirdo freakout music and who also would tell you about the time he almost died at Long John Silver's. He nearly lost a bandmate to a spider bite and another (or maybe the same one?) to heroin, and came back with two albums' worth of clarity before heading back into overmuddled, extra dense work. Yoshimi is nearly 10 years old now, and listening to it makes me think about how much this band meant to be for a period there, and how they just sorta...faded from my view. Many of their fans would not think of Yoshimi as an important album; some might even say it's not even a good one. But that's also the beauty of music, and maybe one of the reasons I always wanted to be in a band: even if only a few people, even if only five hear it, and one of those people have a really intense experience with it, it means something.