Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
2005
Rating:


"Clap Your Hands!" is a fitting beginning for the self-titled, self-released debut album from the magnificently named Clap Your Friends Say Yeah. After declaring, "Away we go!" a carnival barker demands that an audience claps its hands, even though they feel so lonely and "it won't do nothin'." The audience is wrong about that. Clapping your hands and saying "yeah!" is just about the best thing you can do in music this year.

After the introduction, CYHSY launches into "Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away" (boy, are these guys good with names) that reflects nothing of the intro's Tom Waits tendencies. As the cool goddess rusts away, lead singer Alec Ounsworth wails away like a high-pitched David Byrne as the guitars lock and swirl like a more rhythm-obsessed My Bloody Valentine, or Arcade Fire with the northern melancholy melted away. "In This House on Ice" is as full as anything those two bands have produced, but CYHSY have an incomparable ability to make the world turn day-glo with its beautiful guitars.

Just when you think you have CYHSY pegged, they change MOs on "Over and Over Again (Lost and Found)," a Talking Heads/Joy Division/Interpol amalgamation that's a spare loop of guitar and rhythm. "Details of the War" takes the same kind of tract, but this is a melancholy love song with a Bob Dylan harmonica and Echo and the Bunnymen's urgent guitars.

In an album full of brilliance, it says something about "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" that it stands out as the song that could make CYHSY a household exclamation. Dueling guitars trade stereophonic melodies over the bass lead. The insistent, post-punk drums almost out pogo Bloc Party's "Banquet." By the time Ounsworth, caught up in the moment, finally just screams, "Ayahyahyahyahyahyahyahyahyahyahyah" for five seconds, you'll be ready to scream and clap along with him.

Posted Sunday, July 3, 2005

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/music/clap.your.hands.say.yeah/clap.your.hands.say.yeah