Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Some Loud Thunder

When I heard that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah had a second album on the horizon, I didn’t get too excited. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I wanted them to fail, just that I expected them to. Their debut album, however brilliant, was very much a novelty. The sound was so obscure that repeating it would just sound stale. And they had struck such a delicate balance of perfection that it seemed any deviation would result in disaster. Well having now heard the album, I’m proud to admit that I was wrong. It may not live up to their debut, but Some Loud Thunder is great. I really should be ashamed of myself for having so little faith. After all, they were my #1 band to name-drop when demonstrating my ridiculous music tastes and they always went down well when I wanted to release some energy. Some Loud Thunder does differ from their debut, feeling a lot slower, less intense and lacking the tightly packaged pop pieces, however this doesn’t detract from the listening experience, as the band has returned with a richer, more emotional sound which works equally well. While I enjoy the album now, it wasn’t always this way. In what seems to be a common experience, I actually hated it at first. This album is definitely a grower and one you’ll have to stick by for a while before you’ll appreciate it.

Satan Said Dance – This song really stands out as one of the album’s more obscure songs. It’s the perfect evolution of CYHSY’s quirky sound

Mama, Won't You Keep Those Castles In The Air & Burning – I was caught between this and Love Song No. 7 as the best song to use as an example of their slower sound; evidently this won. That little tweak he does when singing ‘morning paper’ always gets me.

For a perfect example of why I hated the album at first, look no further than the title track (try Hype Machine). For the first few listens, I couldn’t even bear to listen through to the end, I had to skip. In fact it sounds so bad that I thought my copy of the album was broken. The problem is that it features very heavy distortion, to the point where the song underneath is barely distinguishable. It wasn’t until I heard the original that I was able to appreciate the energy that this distortion brought. It’s still a bit dodgy though. See how this version makes you feel.