Clap Your Hands Say Your Time is Up!

If you’re a music nerd you’ve probably spent a lot of time over the past year or so either loathing CYHSY or loving them, there’s really no middle ground. It’s funny because I’ve found that even though they have achieved fame and popularity without a record label backing them at all that some still see CYHSY as a band that has “sold out”. I mean this band did what every band wants to do, they got famous without giving up a lick of their artistic integrity, they got big and still called all the shots themselves. I say good for them, they have a success story like no other. Their first self-titled record was pretty damn good; dancey, groovy, maybe even a bit of childish romance thrown into the mix that the world just loved despite the common opinion that lead singer Alec Ounsworth may have perhaps at one time or another swallowed Thom Yorke.
CYHSY has toured so much and have managed to sell out every show with the exception of a handful and now they feel it’s time to release another album, ‘Some Loud Thunder’. This newness is most definitely a departure from their previous work, it seems a bit to me that they may have thought a little too hard about these songs and consciously tried to make each and every one sound different and original; they took out the pop aspect of their tunes and have turned them into the indie noise that Pitchfork loves so much.


When I listened to the new record I was prepared to dance but I didn’t. I’m not saying that it’s terrible but instead of making an album as good as their first, one that was good enough to just sit and listen to, they made an album that you’d put on as background music. The song that I believe they have named the single, ‘Love Song No. 7’ is dark and pessimistic almost as if front man Alec Ounsworth had some sort of sad heart break or life lesson while he was working on it. Gah!
I hope that it doesn’t turn out like Weezer’s second album, Pinkerton. You know the album that Rivers spilled his guts into writing about his lost loves and lesbian lovers only to watch it fail miserably. That was actually my fave Weezer album, perhaps even the only good one they ever released.
‘Some Loud Thunder’ will be released on January 30th, pick it up and decide for yourself if nothing else it’ll make a good conversation piece and you may even earn a tinge of indie rock cred.