October 19, 2005
Clap Your Hands Say...Meh
Brooklyn's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have spent the bulk of 2005 as this year's model of the Indie Rock Critical Darling. Their self-titled debut album -- itself a lean and mean platter of exuberant pop -- found its way into the marketplace with backing from several of the more respected MP3 blogs and critical acclaim from Rolling Stone, who put them on their Hot List earlier this year.
From there, the raves were amplified out the yin-yang by a feedback-looping blogosphere looking for the "next Arcade Fire." It was the attendant bloggorhea that led to CYHSY being incorrectly equated with the Talking Heads. While frontman Alec Ounsworth seems to draw his vocals from the same throaty backroom as David Byrne, the band's sound isn't at all reminiscent of the shimmery shiver of the Talking Heads. Rather, their tight, locked-in grooves, embellished throughout by sunny flourishes calls to mind a Feelies/Stereolab collaboration, with Ounsworth's caterwauling supplying a nervy energy.
DC was the beneficiary of a late schedule change that saw the band pull out of a planned gig in Williamsburg, Virginia, for reasons we have not been able to ascertain. But while William and Mary indie rock fans may have been left at the Cheese Shop to softly weep over their bread ends, they ended up not missing much. Despite the tidal wave of fresh hype, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah offered the sold-out Black Cat a mostly enervating set that fell far short of hopes and expectations.
The evening started out promising enough -- even ambitious, as the band led off with a pair of songs, "Graceful Retreat" and "Me and You, Watson", not found on their debut album. The latter song proved to be an especially galvanizing, raucous little number that led the band into spirited performances of "Is This Love" and crowd-favorite "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth." At this juncture, everything seemed to be heading in the right direction. The band was kicking up a merry din and a couple of members were leaping about with abandon. Ounsworth -- who we figure understands that his vocals are something of an acquired taste -- seemed to be having fun changing up his pitch and cadence. Four songs in, you felt as if the gig was going to come off the way you hoped it was -- with CYHSY delivering up the joyous, carnival-like atmosphere suggested by the opening track on their record.
Unfortunately, going into "Details of the War", the action onstage came to a thudding halt, and from that moment on the band simply lost the string. Momentum turned to quicksand, sharp touches started going flat and what stage presence the band had began to rapidly diminish. "Cigarettes", one of the new songs getting a workout on tour, found its way to the sagging middle of the set, its "sounds like a B-side best left forgotten" tunelessness providing no boost as pauses between songs grew more interminable. By the time the band worked their way around to a passive performance of "Gimme Some Salt", Ounsworth's utterances had faded into a barely perceptible mumble. As the performance waned, so too did the attention of those in attendance, and the sound of clubgoer conversation began to dominate the music.
The band managed to rally somewhat toward the end. The awkwardly parodic "Satan Said Dance" restored much of the energy that had been lost, allowing the band to close their set with a not-too-shabby version of "Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away." But returning to encore, it was CYHSY that appeared to be the ones dealing with rust as the band seemed unsure of how to start the song. The normally delightful "Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood" -- an album highlight that's an ideal closer -- felt rushed and strained. Though it should be said: "Young Blood" did manage to inspire, at least in one couple, some of the most deliciously bad indie-yuppie dancing ever to scorch the shamed retinae of this DCist's eyes.
Given the praise heaped at the feet of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and the very palpable pleasure their album can induce, it's not unreasonable to hope for some of the rascally fun so vibrantly captured on record to come across live. But between the dead air, the false starts, the seeming lack of rehearsal, and the passive, inert black hole that formed in the middle of the set, that hope was dashed. These guys have the songs, but they don't have the chops. The hype rolls onward, but transcendence will have to wait.
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SET LIST:
Graceful Retreat
Me And You Watson
Is This Love?
The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth
Details of the War
Over and Over Again (Lost and Found)
Cigarettes
In This Home Of Ice
Gimme Some Salt
Satan Said Dance
Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away
--
Heavy Metal
Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood
(Austin's The Black Angels opened the show with a sound so relentlessly thudding and droning that it made Joy Division sound like The Complete Rodgers and Hart Songbook in comparison.)
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Yup, i agree...i love the album..but i found the show last night to be unremarkable...
Excellent in-the-moment review. And the less said about the opening act, the better.
I definitely agree with your description of the ark of the show, but I wasn't really disappointed. Expectations weren't too terribly high. I'll still happily listen to their album. Must mention, however, how much Ounsworth hearts Bob Dylan. He's brought the warbble to new levels of unintelligibility. He punctuates with a harmonica. And even, at times, brought Mr. Tambourine Man into the band. And did anyone else notice that this was an unusually tall crowd?
This is some of the best writing I've seen on DCist. Better than many Pitchfork reviews. I'm wholly impressed. Keep up the tremendous work, Jason.
Ditto. Great piece.
Great review. Although, I seemed to enjoy the show a lot more than you did.
Keep in mind that this is only about the 40th time they have played live. Of those 40, they have only headlined about 15 times. When looking at the show from this angle...I think they were pretty amazing. Their composure on stage will only improve with time.
Sounds like the crushing weight of high expectations. Or is that the soft bigotry of low expectations? Either way, great review.
DCist Jason, this is an excellent review. It has everything that the Decemberists review did not.
Good review overall, although like Andrew I think I enjoyed the performance more than the reviewer did. One thing I have to point out, though, is that the back of The Black Cat's main room is always full of people who would rather talk than listen to the band, even when excessive hype isn't involved. I was in the middle of the crowd, about halfway between the sound board and the stage, and couldn't hear a single conversation, even during the relatively quiet moments.
I agree, very good review, but like Nate I didn't hear much talking. though I expected the band to look more hipster-y or something, so that was a nice surprise.
awesome review jason. seriously. dead on.
please write more!
Great recap of last night's show. You're definitely more detail-oriented than me... as you can tell by own retelling of last night's events:
http://journals.aol.com/dcsportsguy/popgoesculture/entries/841
After being bombarded with all of the praise this band has received, both their album and live performance were a huge disappointment to my ears. Considering how many bands as of late are finding success with this exact formula--a singer who can't sing with a few marginally capable musicians performing meaningless songs (bonus points if you claim New York as your home base)--I'm sure they will do just fine.
Lastly, as a fan of The Arcade Fire, I find even the mention of comparison to be highly offensive.
Clap Your Hands and Say Jason!!!!!
Kraplana, I missed the Arcade Fire when they played the 930 club--a show that by all accounts, was entirely heavenly. I asked DCist Kyle, who had been there, to put it in perspective for me, and he basically said the two were world's apart in sheer execution of their live act. "It was like church." he said. And he's not a man given to glib pronouncements. Unless they're about the Super Furry Animals. Or Oasis. Or Mylo. Or...Echo and the Bunnymen. Or, okay, Sea Ray and Annie. But Arcade Fire? No. Never about Arcade Fire. :)
The only way that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah relates to The Arcade Fire is in terms of the level of hype and gushy critical frenzy that has attended the release of their debut albums. The fact that they're being mentioned together so often says a lot about how much more important the hype is than the actual music, when it comes to the so-called "blogosphere." And I say that as someone who really likes both groups, and who saw both of the concerts in question.
i liked this review. i actually really enjoyed the show although it did lack energy and stage presence throughout. i thought the crowd was pretty lame. a bunch of insecure hipsters standing around and not muttering a word (lyric) -- even during what was the highlight for me, "heavy metal." i'm not saying everyone should sing every word (that gets annoying fast), but i don't know...it was like being in a bus depot at times. loosen up, people.
a weird vibe...the band wasn't really into it...and neither was the audience.
You hit that nail on the head, Nate.
caterwauling? enervating? Damn, some hot diction there. Way to work it Jason; at least a lackluster performance gave excuse for a great review.
I think DCist really missed the boat on its musical predictions this week. In contrast, Monday night's pre-panned John Vanderslice, Portastatic, and Brandon Butler show was brimming with nothing but goodness.
Word of the day: bloggorhea
Was anyone at the Foo Fighters show? I'm not usually one for megabands, but they really brought the crowd into it. Normally, if a lead singer jumped into the crowd, jumped up onto the bar and proceeded to play two songs whilst taking shots of Jaegermeister I would have thought he was a douchebag, but Dave Grohl had me convinced. I haven't been to a show that rocked so hard in a long time (we're talking Anthrax/Public Enemy circa '92). Not to mention the between song confession about laying on his couch at home before the show watching Desperate Housewives. Please tell me, DCist Jason, that you have a review of that show coming shortly...
clap your hands and say BREAD ENDS! W&M is getting equally interesting acts this Homecoming weekend: Brazilian Girls and VHS or Beta. Take that.
Hey, William and Mary may come out ahead after all!
Was not at the recent Foo Fighters show, though I've been told it was insane. By way of personalizing it, my wife saw them play 9:30 with Tori and Beck years ago and Grohl was much the same--scaling balconies, leaping around. I think that when Dave thinks there's anyone in the audience who may have had his mom as a teacher, he goes balls out. At any rate, the wife is a massive Toriphile who said on that night, the Foos impressed her the most.
Hot, Jason, very hot! You pinned down what many in the crowd were no doubt feeling. Still I'll catch them next time they're around. It'll be interesting to see how their shows evolve. And I agree that "bloggorea" is the highlight of the review!
May I just say that the Arcade Fire actually had put out a previous release before funeral and probably had a couple more years under their belt than CYHSY so the comparisons arent' even valid.
Honestly, I thorougly enjoyed the show and this was the fourth time I'd seen the band so I didn't really have the burden of "expectations" to interfere with just sitting back (or rather bouncing up and down ecstatically) and simply enjoying the music. We're so quick to be hyper-critical and over-analytical around here that sometimes I think many of us have forgotten how to just ENJOY the music.
There's a reason people in this city love the bland and supremely overrated Sigur Ros so much. Sigur Ros's music encourages us to stand there unmoving, unblinking. And the fact that they sing in a made up language makes them bulletproof to any type of lyrical interpretation/analysis. In the end I wonder if that's just what people around here would rather do, just stand there and not be required to even think about possibly investing the slightest bit of emotion in the music.
In listening to CYHSY you're not going to hear a band that's reinventing the wheel, you're simply going to hear the sound of a band that's getting it right. To be fair some of the criticism has been of the constructive variety but nevertheless I think it's a lot easier to hop on the backlash bandwagon than it is to hop on the hype-machine. But how constructive are we being if what we're reacting to is the hype and not the band itself?
The Black Cat show took a lot longer to sell out than it did in other towns (I've been to three sold out CYHSY shows in Philly and they were waaaay more into it than we were down here.) I'm curious how many people (specifically the naysayers) went to the show based solely on the hype who've never heard the band. I also wonder how many went to the show just so they could say they were there. I'm ALSO curious about how many people went in with the preconceived notion that they wouldn't "get it."
I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it again here, if the band sounded exactly the same, put on exactly the same show except with the minor adjustment of having a DISCHORD or DESOTO logo on the back of that CD would people's reactions change?
For your own sake, y'all, just unfold your arms and do what the band's name says, it'll be good for you trust me.
Sigur Ros, however, knows how to play their own songs. Just a little thing I like to see evidence of.
Is that the best you can come up with? CYHSY knows how to play their own songs too. You've seen them once, I've seen them five times and this whole "they don't know how to play their own songs" crap is just that, crap. You don't believe me? Go ask the people in Baltimore or Philly who were much more into it than we were.
What you fail to address with your grade school "comeback" is that Sigur Ros puts out emotionless, mind-numbing music with unintelligible lyrics cleverly designed to do one thing: make them seem more important than they actually are. Oooh he plays guitar with a bow, never seen that before! (cough*Led Zeppelin*cough)
And what about the fact that CYHSY is NYC product and not a DC product? Don't you think we'd be more supportive, perhaps even enthusiastically so, if this band were born inside the Beltway?
"Is that the best you can come up with?"
That would have been my first question to CYHSY after the show.
I like to let myself go to live rock. But when the band is playing one of their uptempo numbers at 2/3 the BPM of the record, that tells me something. These guys have a great record. I wasn't, you know, LYING, when I described it as "a lean and mean platter of exuberant pop." But they've gone out on tour having received a lot of accolades and they don't know how to even START the majority of their own songs. I don't want to get in the way of your right to see a band that spends several minutes between songs staring dumbfounded at one another, but it's not MY cup of tea.
Had they been from DC, it's likely I would have been just as hard, if not harder. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I'll at least be willing to admit that, personally speaking, the loss of Q And Not U from our local scene isn't the full-on tragedy a lot of people make it out to be.
If you put CYHSY as a live rock experience up against last night's Stars/Death Cab show at 9:30, then, I'm sorry, CYHSY loses out to both bands in every single criteria across every conceivable spectrum.
At any rate, I am rooting for CYHSY to succeed, because I like their songwriting sensibilities and, on record at least, they exhibit some decent musicianship (I especially think they have a top-flight drummer). But they have a way to go before they make varsity. And, above all, it's not MY responsibility to support them. It's THEIR responsibility to entertain me.
"it's not MY responsibility to support them. It's THEIR responsibility to entertain me."
Oh Jason, that's just crazy talk. ;)
I know, dude. I must be forgetting about the $15 I was paid to come be a cheerleader.
Jason--those are very valid points and a much more well rounded response than "at least they can play their instruments."
Again, though, you make a broad statement about them based on seeing them once. If you go to a Cardinals game and Albert Pujuls goes 0 for 4 does that mean he doesn't know how to hit? No it means on that particular night he didn't perform up to your standards. I still say their third performance in Philly (on 9/11) and their Baltimore show are the best of the bunch that I've seen. I thoroughly enjoyed the DC show, though because I didn't have the "burden" of expectations, I could just get right into it as many of us in the front did.
I've seen a ton of shows this year and all of my CYHSY shows rank near the top (with the Pixies being far and away number one.)
I saw Ryan Adams in Philly and it wasn't a pleasant experience (mainly due to the crowd) but apparently his show here in DC the very next night was topnotch. This isn't a brilliant or original analysis but I'd say a ton of hype can do more harm than good to a band like this, at this stage in their career.