Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - "Some Loud Thunder" (self released, 2007)
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"All this talking... you'd think I'd have something to say. But I'm just talking, like a siren getting louder and farther away"
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It was an odd twist of coincidence. I was going to post and ask y'all to start firing off requests for albums to review... as long as they were in my collection, or attainable (no, Rich, Adam Again "Dig" is not on vinyl that I know of), and out of no where Matt makes such a request. "You have to," he says. The album? "Appetite for Destruction." Its the 20th anniversary (dear God, that long already?). So I agreed. I will take pics and do it soon. I wanted to take a short break from metal, lest I become a cliche.
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Carl's Favorite Songs - #36 - If the Truth Be Known by No Laughing Matter
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Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are a triumph. They exemplify music as an art form. They are entirely self supported and published; no label, just word of mouth. Their first LP was a marvel, and garnered a lot of buzz. Two of the three most powerful Davids in the world were even fans (Bowie and Byrne, leaving only Letterman to climb on board). While they are a modern take on Talking Heads, They Might Be Giants, and Violent Femmes, they sound little like any of those bands. Furthermore, the hard-to-love-if-you-are-only-a-casual-fan vocals further separate them from anyone coming before. Their 2007 LP, "Some Loud Thunder," was hotly anticipated. Could they repeat? Would there be a slump? Was it all overblown to start with?
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Most critics and moderate fans hated the new LP in its first few days of life. I was very upset to read the negative reviews, because almost all of them didn't get the art aspect of music. It's useless to try to explain to people that when a band has a hit that they don't always strike gold again. And the sophomore slump is usually the result of pressures and expectations out of the band's control. But CYHSY suffered from none of this, yet people turned on them. The biggest criticism is that the album sounded different, that it was more dissonant, that they over experimented with odd production effects, and that it wasn't as good as the first LP. All you have to do is listen to the first track on the first LP to get where they are coming from... they are experimenting with sounds as a collage; building a mood and a way to express feeling without being explicit (meaning "clear," not "dirty").
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If I am ever allowed to teach my dream course, modern music appreciation, I would use "Some Loud Thunder" as a test LP to see if a pupil has patience to appreciate music as art (much as early Modest Mouse, solo Frank Zappa, or middle period Bjork would have served to do before). While it is devoid of any real mix-tape igniting singles, it is a complete and fantastic LP. It was a great start to the slew of '07 releases, and to be honest, it was less of a disappointment than many of the follow-ups released so far (QOTSA leading the way on that list, holy crap was that a miss). Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are for music fans who spend more time lost in thought than trying to work on their fret board work. And best yet, it isn't for the tight jeans set.
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Horns up!