Skip to main content

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

54
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
I remember playing the first track off of Brooklyn-via-Philly's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's debut album, a circus-sounding affair à la "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" Anyways, I was playing it for a friend and he had the headphones on listening & he couldn't help but giggle... That's the feeling Clap Your Hands Say Yeah give you. It was a lasting memory. In fact 2005 (the year their debut came out) as a whole was a lasting memory I was fifteen & really starting to get into independent music. Clap Your Hands was truly the first band to get famous off of blogs & the internet hype. There is a story about when Clap Your Hands were opening for The National, & after reviews came out of their first album, more people were coming for the opener than the headliner for that tour. And for good reason. Rarely does an album come out & hit you right away on a personal level but also have the critics recognize its genius & flawlessness. There have been very few bands that have landed so well right away. With strong catchy songs & vocals from Alec Ounsworth, singing that is so distinct, you're either gonna' love' it or hate it, sorta' like Bob Dylan. Clap Your Hands were set to be indie darlings. Drummer Sean Greenhalgh was the only consistent member throughout their run, until 2014, when the band kinda' came to a crumble and now it's Ounsworth's one-man-project. But again, his vocals really do carry this project. The band has treated us with five albums: 2005's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, 2007's more difficult and challenging but just as rewarding Some Loud Thunder, 2011's Hysterical, 2014's Only Run, and 2017's The Tourist. Although you'll find some strong tracks throughout (especially on Some Loud Thunder and Hysterical) the band, or what's left of (t)him, will unlikely ever capture that magic they were able to capture on that first album, which is more than a lot of bands can say. It only takes one classic album to become legends: Look at the Sex Pistols. I feel lucky I was there for that magical buzz in 2005 when this band landed. That's all it took for me to become a life long fan of this band... It's...
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cake

43 Cake Cake What you need is some CAKE. The late 90's were primed for CAKE. When the emotional hangover of the grunge scene was too much, we got CAKE. This isn't a gag joke. In fact- your gag reflexes are in need of some CAKE.  Despite CAKE's quirky surface, singer John McCrea's deadpan delivery and Vince Di Fiore's mariachi trumpet playing, CAKE is as real as it gets. And with more than 25 years as a band and still going strong, they have nothing left to prove. It all started with 1994's Motorcade for Generosity with the single " Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle " which mocked trust-fund rebels. Then came 1996's Fashion Nugget with the all-time classic " The Distance ." 1998 gave us Prolonging the Magic, a high-water mark. I got on board in 2001 with Comfort Eagle . I was big on disco at the time and their cover of " I Will Survive " caught my attention, and then I saw the " Short Skirt, Long Jacket " video o...

Grouper

 131 Grouper  Grouper Reverb. Echo. Effects. Acoustic. Droney. These are some words you could use to explain Grouper's earlier work. Grouper is the solo project of Liz Harris. Her first album was self-titled & self-released. Grouper's second album was 2006's Way Their Crept . There was something special about that mid-ought's droney-underwater sounding indie. Grouper would go on to release five (!) more albums before I came on board as a fan: 2006's Wide , 2007's Cover The Windows & The Walls , 2008's widely acclaimed Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill & 2011's double-album (but separately released) AIA: Dream Loss & AIA: Alien Observer ... just to be followed up by 2012's double album: Violent Replacement Part I and Violent Replacement Part II . It wasn't until Grouper's more structured-releases that I became a full fledged fan. It was with 2013's The Man Who Died In His Boat that I finally jumped on board as a full-fled...

FKA twigs

99 FKA twigs FKA twigs FKA twigs is the brain-child of Tahliah Barnett. Under her stage-name of FKA twigs (which I'll just refer to her as twigs from here-on-out) she has released three EP’s (2012’s EP1 , 2013’s EP2 , and 2015’s incredible M3LL155X EP )  and two albums (2014’s LP1 & 2019’s Magdalene ). With someone with such a small catalogue, it's amazing how dense and rich this music is. Before Billie Eilish made the whole whisper-singer mainstream last year, twigs was already releasing down-tempo-trip-hop-whisper-sung music back in 2012. That is when she released her debut, EP1 . twigs hqd been studying dance since the age of six, but deep down, she knew she always wanted to be a recording artist so she eventually left the dancing behind (in a way [dance has always been a big part of her project]) to focus on her music project. However, limiting to just a music project is doing it an injustice in labeling. It’s more of a visual-dancing-art project. Ever ev...