A lot has been said about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the New York band that captured hipsters’ hearts the world over in 2005. Its saccharine-sweet post-punk pop sits at the crossroads of David Byrne Avenue and Tom Tom Club Parkway.
While it’s easy to dismiss certain bands that wear their influences so obviously on their sleeves, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah has maintained its D.I.Y. crediblity and indie adoration for nearly a year. (It may not sound like a long time, but in the realm where the Arctic Monkeys are upstaged by the Editors in less than a month, a year is respectable.)
The band, which plays a sold-out Bluebird Theatre on Tuesday, is far from a slow grower. Its music hits you with an immediacy that commands attention, taking you from head-nodding to losing it on the dance floor in less than 60 seconds.
|
AUDIO
|
|
|
With its eponymous debut record, the band mid-loaded things with “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth” and “Is This Love?” two tracks that are as irresistible as a bag of chips. The instrumentation isn’t obnoxiously in your face like some Kelly Clarkson jam. It’s often subtle, almost as if Belle and Sebastian were scoring a Wes Anderson film – think “Rushmore” or “The Royal Tenenbaums” – with carte blanche.
But the vocals are anything but subtle, as singer Alec Ounsworth proves in “Is This Love?” with the help of bandmates Lee Sargent, Robbie Guertin, Tyler Sargent and Sean Greenhalgh. Ounsworth’s whiny, half-drunk near-falsetto carries the band to a mystical pop land. It’s a happy place, but it’s also so pretty that it doesn’t initially seem possible.
And yet it is. To an extent, you can believe the hype: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is an awesome band with a very clear idea of its identity as a fun indie rock group making delicate yet dancey pop songs.
And Ounsworth is of the indecipherable rock vocalist school, and the fact that he sings as if he’s a pubescent 13 – only instead of avoiding talking in class, he’s flaunting his lisp and octave breaks with a goofy, confident pride – doesn’t help the task of understanding his possessed ramblings. In “Is This Love?” he recounts (we think), “And it’s love. Is this love? No, it’s love. Must be love. This is love. Yes, it’s love. … It is love love love no doubt.”
Of course it’s love – love at first listen, and a continued love that transcended buzz and lasted when every sign pointed toward it flailing and falling into the fiery pit where all buzz bands die an early death. But with so many other NME cover-boy bands out there, it’s wrong anymore to call Clap Your Hands a buzz band.
Now it’s just a band, simply a band – and it’s earned that.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah plays the Bluebird Theatre on Tuesday. The show is sold-out, but any last-minute releases, $14, will be available at the theater’s box office.
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
5more
JAPAN NIGHT Japan Night at the South by Southwest music festival always equals entertainment, no matter the fact that you haven’t heard any of the bands. Japanese punk and J-rock is like no other, and that’s something you can experience tonight at the Bluebird’s Japan Night featuring Stance Punks, The Emeralds, The Rodeo, Carbuttor, Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re, Pe’z and Ellegarden.
PINK MOUNTAINTOPS This Black Mountain side project is all about the unfiltered joy of live music, and they’ll let it all loose tonight at the Hi-Dive.
ENON Quirk-pop reigns with Enon, a band helmed by former Brainiac John Schmersel. They play tonight at Telluride’s Sheridan Opera House as part of the Plunge Music Festival, and again Saturday at the Bluebird in Denver.
TILLY AND THE WALL The Omaha group brings its tap-dance-accented pop back to Denver on Wednesday with a show at the Climax Lounge.
JAMES BLUNT “You’re Beautiful” is a song that has polarized listeners. You love it. Or you hate it. Those who love it have helped Blunt’s show Thursday at the Paramount sell out in advance.
– Ricardo Baca
