Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (GAMH, 25 March 2006)

"You guys are much better than last night's crowd!" -- Jonathan Bree of The Brunettes

"You guys are better than last night. So, if you have friends who went to last night's show, don't tell them that I told you that." -- Robbie Guertin of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Those two lines from each of the acts last night pretty much sums it all up. Last night's Clap Your Hands show was so, so much better than last Friday's performance. The crowd was better (i.e. Retarded Owen Wilson and Train Wreck Dunst were nowhere to be found). The sound was better. The setlists were much improved. Everything seemed to fall into place. And thank goodness. I didn't want to swear off Clap Your Hands, especially since they are one of my most favourite of bands in the last year.

I arrived right before The Brunettes came on. I didn't write anything about them in the last review because of my anger over the two idiots. The Brunettes are essentially two Kiwis, Jonathan Bree and Heather Mansfield, who play ridiculously cute (and rather contrived) pop music. They are accompanied by four other members, whose names I do not know. They use multiple instruments from a slew of horns, an instrument that resembles a pill (or if you're nasty...something phallic) and, of course, the hand claps. Oh, the hand claps. There was so much hand clapping involved that the novelty of the hand clap wore off rather quickly. They opened up their set with this song with the word "baby" in it. And then, like YMCA, they spelled out "B-A-B-Y" with their arms. It was cute, yes, and the crowd thought it was too. It had a whole bunch of air instruments involved too. The novelty wore off quickly though, at least in my view. But the crowd was much nicer than the night before, so they were greeted with loud applause after each song.

The low point for the Brunettes was when the skinny boy multi-instrumentalist was telling a story of how his uncle was the first person to bungee jump the Golden Gate Bridge. Then he said that the first person to bungee jump was this physicist. As he was telling the story, some meathead from the crowd shouted out "BORING". I think this took the Brunette aback and the crowd began booing the heckler.

They also did the Mary Kate and Ashley song complete with masks of the dynamic duo. I closed my eyes in embarrassment of this spectacle. Catchy guitar chords though, but that's about it.

Clap Your Hands came on and they opened up with the same song from last night, "Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away." For some reason, I thought this song was much better played on Saturday night compared to Friday. Like last night, they played all the songs, except the little instrumental bits, from their self-titled debut. "Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" was once again the clear winner garnering the most applause and jumping around. "Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood" was probably the next clear winner.

Unlike last night's show, the band opted to slim down the setlist by eliminating the new songs. The flaw of Friday's show was that they got the crowd hyped up with the songs off the L.P. then brought the energy way down by playing 2 to 3 new songs in a row. Instead, they stuck with their guns and only played 1 song I didn't recognize.

They ended their set with "Satan Said Dance," my personal favourite song. Unlike last night, the crowd didn't yell out "Satan!" But I yelled out "Say Dance!" For their encore, they opened up with "Clap Your Hands" and then played another favourite, "Me and You Watson." I was dancing like crazy at this point. Just when I thought it was all over, they played one final song off of their debut, "Heavy Metal."

The crowd ate up every single song and moment of the show. And so did I. A fantastic show and the band redeemed themselves quite nicely.

Beer Rating: 1/2 Beer