Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Some Loud Thunder

THE REVIEW

Begin to forget the playful music boxes, the energetic and sunny melodies, those delightful acoustic interludes that you wished would last forever. Begin to erase from your mind any catchy melody you remembered! Delete that canary yellow cover, very homemade to be honest, which stood out on the shelves of your trusted store.

Start getting used to the black/white of totally inexpressive and confused faces, as if they had come out of a psychoanalyst's studio! Instead, start remembering Alec Ounsworth's voice and multiply it by 1000.

The Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are back. The east coast American band that we welcomed quite strangely almost two years ago. They were a sort of Arctic Monkeys of the new world: reaching success thanks to blogs on the internet and relentless word of mouth, they recorded their self-titled debut, thus receiving great responses from critics. However, some remained indifferent, some shouted miracle, while some couldn’t stand Ounsworth’s whining voice. Well, who can blame them? To be honest, it’s like a Thom Yorke with a severe stomach ache.

At first, I didn’t like them much either, but then gradually, I got used to the voice and appreciated especially the melodies and the music created by these five "east coasters" Americans.
From the premise I made, however, you will have understood (for those who already had the honor of knowing them) that the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are no longer the same. This album is by no means a follow-up to the previous one.

It presents itself as stormy, without any memorable or catchy melody that you could sing in the shower. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have dared and in my opinion, this choice is rewarded for the courage to not make a photocopy album of the previous one. Courage that allowed the creation of more introspective, deep sounds, and why not, also challenging for ears too fragile and too accustomed to current trends and charts!
The opening track ("some loud thunder") seems to come straight out of the sessions of the White Light/White Heat by Velvet Underground: the bass seems as if it wants to explode from the speakers and Alec barks, actually brays, more than ever. This gives you the impression of a bootleg poorly recorded at some chaotic concert, but it’s not so. Rust, knife blades that twirl and turn in the brain; “Emily Jean Stock”, is a ballad filled with all this! The bass lines, piano notes, and the explosion of cymbals! Acidic.

More noisy and whining.

“Mama, Won’t You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning” is less jarring from the noise but I don't know why it directly reminds me of those Syd-led Pink Floyd, rest in peace. And I want and am still trying to find “love” in the song “Love song n°7” which proceeds slowly and almost makes your stomach turn 180°! It seems as though shadows emerge from the screen at the incursion of that overbearing and gentle accordion with an almost "gypsy" sound. The overlapping voices and the snare drum conclude and we find again the long "Satan Said Dance".
At this point, we perhaps find that song form we are, alas, accustomed to. The music is filled with small electronic lines, those guitar arpeggios that seem to touch our vocal cords, the epileptic insistent organ and the trembling voice keeps repeating "saitin saitin saitin dens dens dens dens dens", the relentless drum with its precise and dragging rhythm. All this makes "Satan Said Dance" one of the best songs of the batch!

Remember when I initially described those acoustic soundscapes that our guys painted on the last record, the ones we wished would never end? In this album, all this is turned upside down and the musical interlude has changed: now there is an tiny organ with the “gypsy” accordion we have already heard before! "Underwater (you and me)" is the most tuneful, it could be released as a deceptive/bastard single to lure the unsuspecting! I award a prize to anyone who can follow the text in the booklet and understand what Mr. Ounsworth says in the long martial noisy closing track: "Five Easy Pieces"!

The songs of Some Loud Thunder seem cut out, disassembled, folded, wadded up, and put back together again, glued together with low-grade tape, smeared with melted glue stick and tortured with stapler points creating thus a "diabolic art attack interesting fascinating and sinister.” This album reminds a lot of the experimental groups that once flourished in Texas, Illinois, and New York America. The low sound quality (does anyone know or remember the Black Lips?!?!?). Those free-form creations by Red Crayola. Those schizoid perverse twists by the best Velvet Underground led by the Cale/Reed duo.

Who buys this album dares a lot and does so well but those who do not love such radical changes will not be enthusiastic for sure. I repeat, the CYHSY dared, and they did a great job by creating this sort of experimental flower power revival of the 60s in grey mode, and Some Loud Thunder is an album that should be appreciated for its edges and its angles, not for distracted listening and a too-easy discrediting comment that we will surely have on the tips of our tongues.
Forget now, the timid figures squashed in the canary yellow.

Now there is room for the dark grey and the bright white of a "some loud thunder”…