clap your hands and say yeah by abigail bruley

A Week With Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's "Some Loud Thunder": Day 4

4 February 2007
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Abigail Bruley

Does Clap Your Hands Say Yeah exist in a state that it would ever really need to define what it might consider a single from an album? I’m not sure those really count for much in the kind of world that indie rock works in. All it really amounts to is that the designated song will be included with that one or two b-sides and maybe a video when it gets released as a short-playing EP. Clap Your Hands are more of a band that relishes the challenge and ability to write a full and complete record, one gets the feeling. There is a focus and a method that are consulted every step of the way and that luxury again comes when you are doing everything for yourself and answer to nothing by your pillow each night. That said, one thing has been made crystal clear on this fourth day of listening that as much as I’m told that “Satan Said Dance” has been a favorite live cut (never had the privilege of seeing them in-person yet), it’s not that song that should be considered the “single” if they ever happen to need to finger one. That distinction falls to “Mama, Won’t You Keep Those Candles In The Air & Burning?” a song that feels like beautiful resignation, like a man swimming in the gravy, flailing through his days, seeing everyone around him getting by so much easier. It acts the way a lighter with one drop of remaining butane does, clicking and throwing tiny sparks, but never getting a flame until finally, finally it catches. Then you have Ounsworth talking about how better men drink taller beers (a line of self-deprecation if I’ve ever heard one) and he’s just going to other cities, which let him play with gas and fire. He sings about big houses and morning papers and in places you can hear background chatter as if from a bar. Ounsworth’s songwriting is splendidly cryptic and yet relatable on Some Loud Thunder. He ends “Mama” with the line, “Time does not cut deep/But cuts most absurdly.” He does the same thing.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Official Site

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