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When Clap Your Hands Say Yeah appeared in 2005, Alec
Ounsworth's jerky, punky indie troupe were lauded by many as the
missing link between Talking Heads and The Rapture,
their unique zeitgeist-surfing mixture of dance, art school nonchalance
and ragged guitars sending hipsters and critics alike into paroxysms
of joy.
This, their sophomore record, comes laden with the kind of nervous
tension that can destroy groups. After flying in under the radar with
their first long-player, with bloggers creating the kind of publicity
that A&R departments can only dream of, CYHSY have it all to do -
create a record that sells by the bucketload, and try and stick to
their alternative guns to appease hardened fans.
It's a confused tactic, and one the band seldom seem to pull off
here, veering dangerously between 'deliberately difficult' and
'commercially acceptable', often within the same song. Much of the
blame should be placed squarely at producer Dave Friedman's door - a
fine knob twiddler in his own right - who desperately over-produces
most of the tracks here into bizarre and convoluted shapes. When he's
working with songwriters as good as the Flaming Lips and
Mercury Rev, it's an excellent combination. Here, with a band
still finding their feet, and desperate to remind the world to know
how alternative they are, it's just plain annoying.
For example, instead of, say, opening their make or break record
with a stonking pop number, first track Some Loud Thunder is
willfully, bizarrely obtuse - a half decent Strokes-soundalike
that Friedman renders practically unlistenable with ear-bleeding vocal
distortion. While CYHSY may be giggling like schoolboys at their
cleverness, it'll simply end up with legions of confused fans
desperately fiddling with the treble controls on their ipods.
Similarly, the otherwise pretty well-structured Emily Jean Stock is
ruined by Ounsworth's vocals, warbled like a hillbilly who's had too
much moonshine. It's almost as if the band have set out to
intentionally separate the wheat from the chaff, the kids who enjoyed
This House on Ice from the last record are picked off like flies with
the opening salvo.
Only lead single Satan Said Dance is anything near the tone to the
first record - all jerky guitar cuts and electronic beeps - but there
isn't the sense of warmth and low-fi fun that typified their eponymous
debut. For a five minute single, there are an awful lot of fancy
production techniques thrown in to what is, essentially, a Rapture
B-side.
In fact it's the end of the record that impresses most - Yankee Go
Home is easily one of the best tracks on the record, despite the
vocals having the uncanny ability to render the uninitiated to
screaming agony in a matter of seconds. And while there is hardly
anything here that matches the heart-tugging frazzled beauty of first
album highlight Over and Over Again (Lost and Found), closer Five Easy
Pieces runs it close - a romantic bath of fuzzy, underwater vocals and
unintelligible yelps from Ounsworth.
It's a striking end to an album that doesn't so much fail to
deliver, as forgets to post the thing in the first place. There are
moments here that remind you exactly why you fell in love with the
band first time around, like gorgeous ballad Underwater (You and Me),
but, with too many ideas swimming between the band and their producer,
this album is too much of a mess to be seen as a worthy follow-up to
such a great debut. If they peg everything back, and employ Danger
Mouse on the next record, the next one could be very
interesting.
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