ALBUM REVIEW: Yonder Mountain String Band Prizes Perspective on ‘Get Yourself Outside’

At a glance, the title of Yonder Mountain String Band’s new album, Get Yourself Outside, seems like an unambiguous call to action. But it’s not referencing the great outdoors: These songs are meant to encourage reflection and a conscientious shift of one’s perspective. Get Yourself Outside processes realities, emotions, and questions that have fomented over the last year via interconnected narratives across the songs.

The band — Adam Aijala on guitar, Ben Kaufmann on bass, Dave Johnston on banjo, Allie Kral on fiddle, and Nick Piccininni on mandolin — offers its signature energy, satisfying hooks, and performative chemistry with “Beside Myself.” This comfortable start to the record proceeds to reveal its contemplation of change through parts of the chorus — sometimes with especially painful relevancy. (As the world stopped turnin’ round / Friend, it feels upside down / Right became wrong / And all the new songs went up on a shelf). The song’s refrain (It’s so hard to see me, beside myself), takes an outside view of one’s own behavior, which can be especially tough to do amid emotions that can make one feel “beside myself.”

“I Just Can’t” bursts with poised, nimble, fingerstyle melodies. Piccininni’s mandolin takes a prominent role, showing how well he has meshed with Yonder Mountain String Band since joining the band in January 2020. Though this song narrates a separate story from “Beside Myself,” it too, alludes to contemporary dynamics: “Goin’ a mile a minute / it’s a million mile day / wasted disagreements / steal my time away.” The track feels like a replay of the same day from the opening song, except it’s been shifted to the perspective of someone else who is contending with a frustrated and contentious mindset, opposite from the introspective nature of the prior protagonist.

“Into the Fire” shifts perspectives again — this time to a heartbroken person who’s hoping for a resuscitation of a failed relationship: “Give you my heart, most of my soul / Looking for light in a love gone cold / Why am I lonely, left high and dry / I’d give you the world and you ask for my pride.” “Broken Records,” the aptly titled song that follows, wallows in a similar loss.

The album features thought-provoking lyrics and bustling-but-precise musicality throughout, whether blending frenetic banjo and droning fiddle double stops on “Change of Heart” or overdubbed fiddles playing a reel snugly in unison, such as on “Out of the Pan.” It can risk imparting some musical fatigue on the listener, but the album rotates enough between faster and slower tempos, as well as multi-part melodies and solo vocal lines, to keep the album from feeling monotonous.

Though Get Yourself Outside appears cloaked in a negative haze, the intention to inspire new thought patterns and emotional vantage points stands strong. In fact, as the vexed internal admissions in final track “Suburban Girl” wind down (Make up your mind suburban girl), simply turning to the idea behind the album’s title — to get yourself outside (of your head) — can prompt another listen, like coming around a loop. It’s almost as if the more the album is played, the more a new perspective can shine through.