“In This Home on Ice” - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
(Words/music: Alec Ounsworth, available on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, self-released 2005, Wichita Recordings 2006)

Thinking about it now, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah weren’t built for the long haul.  I know they’re still a relatively young band and they still have the chance to evolve into something exciting again, but right now they’re barely worth mentioning after a cringe-inducing performance on Jimmy Fallon’s show a while back and a second album met with little interest and less acclaim.  Mostly, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah created their own replacement.  Their meteoric rise showed the power of the internet – whether it was tiny blogs raving about their live shows or larger blogs disseminating MP3s.  The first, self-titled album showed how a combination of a few good songs (more on that in a minute) and a few double-clicks could grow an audience seemingly overnight.  It’s also worked dozens of times over since, and while the methods have grown (think of all the different ways you could hear/watch a band on the internet without even downloading their record), the audience expanded along with it.  Clap Your Hands Say Yeah either had to capitalize on their digital wave before it crested (think of how the Arcade Fire took the leap from blog band to “big band”) or risk getting sucked back in by the ocean’s undertow.

It’s easy to point at the band’s recent output and credit their surge in popularity solely with their on-line ubiquity, but that first Clap Your Hands Say Yeah record goes nowhere without some excellent songs.  “In This Home on Ice” particularly made me turn my head and take notice.  It’s not as bouncy as many of the other songs on the album; instead, it cultivates as sort of icy, distorted feel.  The guitars buzz slightly while the vocals settle for mixing in rather than standing out.  While other points in the album earn the band references to The Feelies and David Byrne (vocally, at least), “In This Home of Ice” sounds less derivative than all of the name-checking reviews imply.  Instead, it’s heavy on some of the less-credited (meaning not just the yippy vocals) eccentricities that make this first album interesting.  In particular, the backwards vocals make the song feel like it’s slipping around the icy home, and momentarily suggesting that the band’s lost their footing.  Instead, the band stops on a dime for a measure and comes back fully locked in.  This moment of confidence and control suggests hope for the band’s future; now that the spotlight is on someone else, perhaps the band will return to their strongest point in the first place – their songwriting.  If they do, expect to be bombarded with MP3s again.

More on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm