My disdain for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is nigh legendary. I didn’t believe their debut was the earth-shattering work of art everyone else did, and I thought it was crummy that they stole the spotlight when their pals The National tried to do them a favor and take them on tour opening for them, only to have the crowds skip out right after CYHSY’s set.
It annoyed me to no end that these guys were getting so much attention for what I felt was a sub par, at best, album. The only thing they had going for them, in my eyes, was that they showed the Majors that someone completely outside the system could still have a success sales-wise, and I thought that boded well for the future of D.I.Y.
In the world of music though, at least as far as i’m concerned, everyone gets another chance every time they release a new album. Even Kill Hannah gets a listen from me with every release, and the day they record something really good I’ll be more than happy to give them their due for doing so. It’s probably not going to happen, but there is always that possibility.
This brings us to CYHSY’s newest disc, the (again) self-released Some Loud Thunder. I put it in at work yesterday and gave it an honest listen. And I liked it. The über-distorto effect on the opening track, wherein all pushes are pushed blood red, seemed a little precious, as if the band was trying to play hard to get in that “we obscure our catchiest pop” sort of way but once I got past that I discovered that the band had indeed progressed. The album is by no means great, but it’s not the half-baked mess their debut was, so if Pitchfork were to award this a 6.8 I wouldn’t find myself arguing against it.
I still wish their lead singer would just let go of that David Byrne fetish, but at least this time it’s listenable.
Yeah, it’s really all about the vocals, isn’t it? If Ounsworth would just deliver songs with a straight face instead of tweaking his vocals in the most unnatural way, I’m sure I’d like this band a lot more. That said, “Yankee Go Home” is a pretty spectacular song.
I think the first album was maybe one of the best indie pop debuts of all time and was an album that pulled almost everyone in upon the first listen. There is not a weak song on the album, and the lyrics are pretty decent for a young indie pop band. And the songs that seem weak, the tracks toward the end, are really the strongest tracks after repeat listens. If you notice…pitchfork gets a hard-on for bands that have frontmen with unique sounding voices, say Chin Up Chin Up. I can’t say I disagree with them, pending the music is also decent. In todays music world almost everything has been done, and for the most part I can hear any musician or band or song and tell you another song that it “ripped off” in some way. That is why original vocals helped this band so much. I agree about the National thing, I think that album that year was a much stronger record but Clap Your Hands put out an album that year that I will listen to until the day I die. I don’t know if I can say the same for The National. It is not the most original stuff out there but it is some of the best pure pop stuff I have heard since maybe the Beatles.