Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are the latest indie darlings touted by Pitchforkmedia, overhyped by the recent CMJ Music Festival in New York and overposted by blogs all around. Like with other bands that have received so much hype, I am drawn to the hype and I bought my ticket months in advance. Are my expectations going to be met? We shall see (The Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party were hits; The Bravery (at least initially) and Annie were misses).
You know the hype was for real when Mezzanine sends you an e-mail mid-afternoon encouraging you to get your will call ticket starting at 7pm because they're expecting 800 people to fall in line. So, I did the smart thing so C and I went to get our ticket right at 7pm.
You also know that there's hype if everyone and their mom on Craigslist is BEGGING you for a ticket and are willing to pay double face value for it.
So, I go into the venue and caught the tail end of Bird Monster, which ironically one of the band members used to work at the firm I work for now. They actually sounded really good, and it was a shame that I missed them.
After a fairly short wait (or was it because I was already three sheets to the wind at this point?), Clap Your Hands came on. They started off with a new song which sounded pretty good. It was sort of surreal hearing Alec sing. That voice is one of those rare types, like David Byrne. Then they launched into "My Yellow Country Teeth" which is my absolute favourite song in the album. Me and my friends couldn't help but start dancing at this point.
We danced at several points during their what seemed like short set. Basically, any song from their debut release we danced to. "Over and Over Again (Lost and Found)" and "In This Home on Ice" are some. We went ape shit during "Is This Love?" And we even went even more ape shit during "Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood," which was the last song of their set.
As enjoyable as the songs are, Clap Your Hands were very matter of factly with their stage presence. Granted, I wasn't expecting any sort of Arcade Fire antics, but it would have been cool.
As expected, everyone was there for Clap Your Hands rather than the National. We decided to stay nonetheless since the National put out good tunes. Alligator and Sad Song for Dirty Lovers are great albums, really melodic and slow. However, their live show is something too plain. I saw them before and wasn't too thrilled. This time, I was just beeming from Clap Your Hands so I thought I'd give them a shot.
Their music just clashed with Clap Your Hands that I immediately didn't enjoy myself that much. I decided to leave 3/4 of the way through their set, but there were some highlights like "Looking for Astronauts."
But the definite highlight was Clap Your Hands. These guys are going to be huge soon enough. Next venue will be something big I'm sure. Like Fillmore.
Beer Ratings:
-- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah:
-- The National:
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You can find pics and videos of the show here:
Abir's Clog
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