Alec Ounsworth from the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah has released a solo album under his own name and has hinted that the band may be calling it a day.
Difficult second album syndrome has no place in the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah vocabulary. Not that the blogger faves are exactly busting a gut to have a hit.
ven before they take the stage Cold War Kids and Elvis Perkins have insured the joint will hop and then some. Nothing, however, could adequately prepare one for the maniacal surge when Brooklyn’s finest appear.
You can tell it’s festival season when singles start appearing from bands whose albums had started to gather dust on the shelves. Unwieldy of title and length, CYHSY’s ‘TSOMYCT’ has very little chance of doing anything mainstream radio-wise but works as a fine reminder that they are a great little band. Job done then.
Primed to attract and repel in equal measure, Alec Ounsworth’s disaffected drawl is pure vocal Bovril and, for many, the CYHSY maker/breaker. An acquired taste, it will either have you clutching that CYHSY record to your chest in fevered, heart palpitating devotion or reaching for the nearest scalpel to perform a Van Gogh ear double.
Thanks to internet fueled word-of-mouth, Brooklyn’s Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are indie-rock’s latest sensation. But they’d much rather you compared them to Hall & Oates.
How long before someone bandies the phrase ‘doing an Arcade Fire’ in relation to this bunch? Give it five minutes. Granted that this has that same North American unhinged vibe to it, but CYHSY would look set to occupy a more cultish position. This is good in a quirky way, but a perhaps a little too aware of its own sense of importance to be particularly loveable.
How cool are Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? Well, cool enough to shift forty thousand units from cardboard boxes before anyone had heard of them. Ice cold enough to make the universally knee-trembling reviews this album received stateside seem far too understated. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, Alec Ounsworth’s Brooklyn five piece has it all going on.
