Clap Your Hands Say Yeah decided not to wait the perfunctory two years in between records to release their sophomore effort "Some Loud Thunder," but to to release it as soon as it was ready. Eager to prove there's more to the band than just a business story, "Some Loud Thunder" demonstrates just how far this band has come since the release of their debut. This is not CYHSY Part II - this is a departure record, a record that will stand the test of time and critics alike.
Review by J. Scott McClintock
A ton of people had their eyes trained on this sophomore release and it's difficult to give it a fair shake once you've muled-up to the "pre-order" download carrot and subsequent hype. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's debut was a decent, giddy first album -- not the end-all, be-all, "best indie release ever" that it was willed to be by fans and critics. It was just a good record that fortunate events conspired to elevate beyond its own scope and capabilities. It was over-hyped, plain and simple, and (lord bless 'em) the guys in CYHSY soldiered through it all, and seemed well enough armored to take the gushing praise, smile politely, stick it under their collective hat and then get back to doing what they were doing. This is significant because history says that once your band is hyped that much, you're usually toast. Heads get big, sights get set too high and direction is lost. It's sad, but it's often the way these kinds of "best debut ever" stories play themselves out. The proof in the pudding is, without fail, the second record, with all of its anticipated greatness. Will it exceed expectations? Will it be a blunder? Sometimes it all hinges on number two, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's debut follow-up, Some Loud Thunder, comes to plate, visibly sweating under the strain and stress. The opening song (and title track) "Some Loud Thunder," immediately divides the fan base with insanely compressed and distorted production that makes the rest of producer Dave Fridmann's work sound like purist, two-mic, chamber ensemble recordings. It's waaaaaay over the top (it actually physically hurts to listen to it) -- it's not heavy, it's painful -- and that will make it or break it for some folks right there. Hold up though, remember their debut recording started off with some crazy carnival banter -- maybe this is just the weird opener here? It is. There's nothing else on the album that gets to "Some Loud Thunder"'s level of "ouch" and there's even a "non-distorto" version of the tune floating around the download sites for those who can't take the pain. Get past that, and you start getting into the real stuff -- the bulk of which tends toward meandering tension builders that never really take off. Free from label prodding (and polishing) the guys in CYHSY seem to spend a great deal of this album screwing around on trumpets, accordions and prepared pianos. It sure sounds like they indulged every overdub whim that could be conceived and, at times, it's a bit off-putting for the listener. "Quit screwing around and get back to work...please!" Really, that's good solid advice because when CYHSY apply themselves, good stuff happens. The meandering tension builders ("Emily Jean Stock," "Love Song No. 7," the indulgent instrumental "Upon Encountering the Crippled Elephant," "Goodbye to Mother and the Cove" and "Five Easy Pieces") all have their moments but there's definitely an unfinished and tentative feel here. It sounds like a band accompanying a singer/songwriter who can't fully let go of that riveting coffee house spotlight. On the aforementioned songs, you could strip away all the incidental noodling and end up with a decent singer/songwriter record. It seems, in an effort to sound more sophisticated (read, serious) CYHSY have kind of taken a step backward. It's not all like this though. There are moments of brilliance, both musically and lyrically, and they are all contained in the tunes that are the most realized. "Mama, Won't You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning?"makes this list, if only for the thoughtful lyrics of Alec Ounsworth. "Arm and Hammer" is where things really start to coalesce. There's still a lot of spontaneous creativity at work here, but it's wrangled in enough to give the tune a sense of purpose. Lyrically, this one's on a mission and it succeeds in being a nice, bitter "F***k Off!!" as well as an affirming manifesto. "Yankee Go Home" is quite good -- maybe the most fully realized thing on the whole album. Great melody, great lyrics, somewhat more refined overdub coloration -- and it's got guts. "Papa said get used to it/Papa said it gets so goddam hard but I get used to it" and "I'm calling upon North Carolina to help me out here" are but two of the fine bits of lyric on "Yankee..." and, when this song builds up to it's blow-out chorus, it sincerely rocks. "Satan Said Dance" certainly has the goods to be an indie-kid party bopper. All dissonant, demented disco bounce (à la the Cure) with that "guaranteed to raise an eyebrow" refrain of "Satan, Sa-tan, Satan, Satan, Sa-tan." It's fun, well played and slightly unsettling, a perfect disjointed dance number, but Ounsworth's lyrics here seem throwaway and that, sadly, lends the tune an air of novelty. "Underwater (You and Me)" also barely makes this list -- helped in large part by Ounsworth's good lyric work, but hindered by a decidedly demo-ish sheen. Half the album is guilty of this, while the other half seems light-years ahead in the band development department. Is this an "age of the digital download" thing? Are CYHSY banking on a few "out of album context" downloaded singles to buoy this record? If they are, and it works out, it could be one of the most forward thinking business plans ever.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Some Loud Thunder
[Clap Your Hands Say Yeah; 2007]
Rating: 7.2
Unless you've been living under a rock that is itself under a larger rock-- or you're not an indie rock fan-- the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah story should have a folkloric familiarity to you. To read an indie blog or webzine in 2005 was to hear the tale of five brave lads from Philly and Brooklyn who bypassed the Byzantine conduits of record labels and PR agencies, selling more than six figures' worth of their debut album on the merits of the music alone.
But online opinion is like a magnifying glass in sunlight: Whatever it admires too closely for too long is enlarged, then incinerated. There was truth in the emerging narrative, but it reflected longing more than reality; the band's story became the stuff of myth, and myths beg to be debunked. That crystallization was completed when mainstream publications began filling their pages with identical articles about the internet as independent music's democratic new frontier and adopting CYHSY as the trend's avatar.
This was how, in the space of a couple months, CYHSY were transformed from a unique phenomenon to a creative ideal, and the music contained on their still-terrific debut album became difficult to hear above the din of warring ideologues. "Two years ago," the Independent Online's Andrew Purcell wrote in a January 12 article, "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah rewrote the rules of pop music, but this won't save them from the kicking that's coming their way." He's probably right, but this isn't necessary if we're careful not to get our distaste for packaged mythology mixed up with distaste for the music itself. Before CYHSY's sophomore album Some Loud Thunder materialized, the question of how the band would follow its hot-topic debut seemed hopelessly complex. But given that the group had little to do with its own hype-- and that Alec Ounsworth is by all credible reports a very private person who disdains public opinion-- the answer, in retrospect, is obvious: They made another Clap Your Hands Say Yeah record.
If Some Loud Thunder isn't as consistent as the debut, it's an adequate follow-up that contains a handful of fantastic songs, a handful of uneven ones, and a handful of duds. Famed producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Mogwai) brings his usual touch to the album-- it's denser than the debut, with even more towering harmonies. The only time Fridmann does the band a disservice is on the title track, which opens the record with the same sort of vague antagonism with which "Clap Your Hands!" kicked off the debut. "Some Loud Thunder" seems like a solid, peppy indie rock song, but it's such a mess that it's hard to tell for sure-- pickled in ugly distortion, it sounds like a bad rip. (Ounsworth claims the album is intended to be heard on vinyl; perhaps it works better there.) As a mission statement and a fuck-off, "Some Loud Thunder" is even more effective than "Clap Your Hands!": The latter was obviously intended to be daunting, while the former is rich with ambiguity. Was it meant to sound shitty or did it just turn out that way? Regardless, it's a drag to listen to.
The most engaging songs here zero in on what CYHSY do best: cracked, brassy vocals, shaggy rhythms, and luxuriant melodies. The flickering luau-rock of "Mama, Won't You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning?" finds Ounsworth's clarion voice at its most affecting, eventually washing out in a tide of woozy harmonies. "Love Song No. 7", with its slithering vocal line and stark piano, is distinct from the band's usual fizzy shimmer; it's darker and finer than anything else on the record. "Underwater (You and Me)" profits from its density, with tight coils of reverbed guitar spring-loading the bouncy melody. These tracks find CYHSY tweaking their template with more sumptuous, Fridmann-assisted layers, with excellent results.
An entire album of songs this well-tuned would have trumped the debut, but Some Loud Thunder bogs down in some uneven ideas. The transition from bright acoustic jangle to crispy garage-psych on "Emily Jean Stock" is vitalizing, but Ounsworth's drooping affectations emphasize the hokier qualities of his voice. The goofy yet fun "Satan Said Dance" is an indie-dance track laced with twittering sci-fi keyboards; one wonders if the indie world is comfortable enough with its relationship to dancing to enjoy a song about Hell being a place where Satan makes you dance. I have a soft spot for the admittedly overcooked "Yankee Go Home", a Destroyer-caliber piece of musical theater where Ounsworth gets to inflect the hell out of lubricated words naturally suited to his slippery voice, like "Honolulu." Rounding out these problematic tracks are stillborns like the meandering "Arm and Hammer" and the throwaway gypsy instrumental "Upon Encountering the Crippled Elephant".
In the end, one wonders if the hype didn't exert a subtle influence on CYHSY after all. Consider that Ounsworth, who represents himself as being neither comfortable nor interested in anything resembling a spotlight, has answered that hype with a murkier, weirder album than the one that spawned it, one that seems pulled in too many different directions. Then consider how the title Some Loud Thunder seems, deliberately or not, to refer to the very extra-musical cacophony that Ounsworth claims to be unaffected by. A wheel's stationary hub might not care about its spin, but it still feels the pressure of all those whirling spokes.
-Brian Howe, January 29, 2007
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