Clap Your Hands to this album
Published Jan. 30, 2007
I blame one person for the rise of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
That person is my English teacher from my senior year of high school, a man who would periodically start each class introducing us to an indie artist on the verge and doing so with an air of pretentiousness that was simultaneously endearing and nauseating. It was maybe a week after his brief lesson on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah that the band's wildly innovative 2005 self-titled, self-released debut skyrocketed it to indie-demigod status, topping quite a few "Best New Artist" lists. It seemed nearly every self-proclaimed indie music "expert" — including the aforementioned English teacher — was referencing this fresh new Brooklyn band, allowing the hype to surpass the music.
Now with its sophomore release, Some Loud Thunder, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is faced with the challenge of proving that it is above the hyperbole that was thrust upon it.
On Some Loud Thunder, the band broadens its horizons in several different directions, simultaneously becoming both more innovative in its instrumentation and more accessible on its first label-released album. Even on its march to the mainstream, the band keeps its original essence with its keyboard-as-percussion riffs, bouncy rhythms and quirky sensibilities, all wrapped up with frontman Alec Ounsworth's highly distinctive vocals. The band stays true to the sound that brought it so much press on "Mama, Won't You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning?". In spite of being a simple acoustic-guitars-and-keyboards track, the song is one of the album's strongest. The vocals here are a lot of fun, and the "la la la" refrain and call and response throughout make it fun to sing along to.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah makes attempts at new sounds as well, including carnival-style orchestral arrangements on the instrumental "Upon Encountering the Crippled Elephant" and electronic-dance pop on "Satan Said Dance," which is potentially one of the year's great indie-kid dance party tracks.
The one flagrant shortcoming of Some Loud Thunder — perhaps an expected one considering the band's eclectic style — is its disjointedness. In spite of some shining early moments, the album doesn't really gain momentum until the last third. Ounsworth and company break out the big guns, an arsenal of soulful bitterness and barrages of well-placed influences and new sounds that break through the ready-to-attack frontlines of media hype and accusations of a "sophomore slump."
Each of the final four tracks has an entirely different feel but all seem to complement one another well and finish out the album strong.
The acoustic "Arm and Hammer" jumps from haunting, sparse plucking to bouncy, jangle pop. It is complemented by Ounsworth's delightfully unsettling wailing and yelping, leading the track to sound like something from a bizarre love child of Nick Drake and Violent Femmes lead singer Gordon Gano. The jarring guitar stabs and epic desperation of "Yankee Go Home" make it the surprise political anthem of the year.
On the album's closer, "Five Easy Pieces," the band arms itself with organs, harmonicas, jangly guitars and spacious warped vocals for a '60s-evoking pop jam that is a rallying cry in defense of its efforts. This is an example of a near-perfect indie pop track because it is something entirely unique to the band but gains accessibility by echoing other bands, such as using elements of The Shins. It is the kind of song that would be at home on both the soundtrack to a John Cameron Mitchell movie or an episode of "Grey's Anatomy."
It is with the closer that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah advances on the often-cutthroat indie-rock battlefield, putting aside hype and expectations to create an excellent second album and winning a well-fought battle.