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In the mid-2000s, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah released their self-titled album, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, which was self-produced and initially self-distributed.
Up until that point, no one had heard of them except maybe some residents of Philly and a few acquaintances of the band members.
The album is very good, but strange. Because the voice is a kind of meow that is always on the verge of annoying the hell out of you, but never quite gets there to truly annoy you. In short, it's a great album, and the subsequent 4 or 5 are great too, some more, some less.
At a certain point, the guy who founded the band, Alec Ounsworth, starts performing alone. And rearranging the tracks from the albums for piano and voice. And taking them on tour in this reworked form.
This leads to, at the beginning of this year 2024, this EP, which I find truly splendid and which I haven't been able to stop listening to since January.
Alec's voice has lost some of its potentially irritating sharpness, and now you can even understand what he's saying. And you discover the poetry of his lyrics, which perhaps got a bit lost in the albums. At least, I had completely missed it.
When it seems your subjects
Have all forgotten you
I need you to pretend that you are mine
And the water is just deep enough to
Take another chance
Ah, but the river doesn’t want you tonight
So. I have to say that I tend to fall in love with the acoustic versions that many artists end up making of their own works at some point. I don't know what it depends on. Maybe it's because when a song is stripped down to its core like that, you can really, really, really get how cool it is. Or maybe because it seems like you can see the love that creators have for their creations. And because you usually get the feeling of being admitted into a more intimate space, more genuine, closer to the artist. Well, whatever it is, this EP is a beauty.
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