This Friday, prepare to do more than just applaud at the Campus
Events Commission’s concert.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, who will be playing in Bruin Plaza on
Oct. 7, has been making audiences all over do as the name suggests
on their first major national tour.
The Brooklyn-based band met in college and came together in 2004
to record their eponymous debut. Clap, a truly independent band who
has yet to sign to a U.S. record label, has already sold over
25,000 copies of their album through their Web site and the
independent retailer Insound. Most of those copies were shipped
directly from members’ apartments.
Despite their rapid rise in popularity, which has included
accolades from trend-makers Pitchforkmedia.com, the group remains
humble about their success.
“What buzz?” asked Alec Ounsworth, the band’s
lead singer, before acknowledging the band’s growing fan
base.
“The big tour gets bigger every day. Many know the album.
Sometimes it seems some folks know the lyrics a bit better than I
do lately.”
The band’s name, according to Ounsworth, can be attributed
to “a long story which involves gunfights and
chivalry,” although he frequently changes the tale.
However, it’s the group’s unique brand of indie rock
that has gotten people talking. The band’s sound owes an
equal debt to The Cure’s dramatic pop and the spastic
intensity of the Talking Heads. Ounsworth sings with a searing
voice reminiscent of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, albeit with a
New York accent thrown on top.
And it’s the vocals that distinguish this band from the
rest of New York’s dance-punk scene. Most of the time,
Ounsworth seems barely in control of his flighty register,
careening back and forth and threatening to lose track of the song.
Audiences on Friday should expect the unexpected from the
unpredictable singer.
“I have discovered lately that I can do much more when
I’m not precisely sure what I’m going to do
next,” Ounsworth said. “So I take certain opportunities
to make these shows new to me. And yes, it is important to have a
solid foundation. Improvisation and variation can spin wildly atop
a solid foundation.”
Clap recently inked a landmark distribution deal with Warner
Music Group’s Alternative Distribution Alliance, which should
make the album widely available. The band is the first to make such
a deal without a record label as intermediary.
Between Internet buzz and word of mouth, the band may be the
first to be self-sufficient at this high a level of underground
popularity.
For others, however, the success is not without its drawbacks.
Clap is on tour opening for The National, a perceptive, darkly
humorous rock group who released the album “Alligator”
earlier this year. The National has been overshadowed by the
newfound celebrity of its tour mates, with half the audience
reportedly streaming out of venues after several recent Clap
performances before the headlining band had a chance to take the
stage.
“They have been as OK as they can be, but I don’t
imagine this could be a welcome surprise,” Ounsworth said.
“I can’t say much about this. I don’t understand
why people leave before The National plays, but I do think that
they are missing out.”
Touring issues aside, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is taking the
world by storm. A European tour is set for November, and the group
recently announced that the UK’s Wichita Records will release
their album in January.
They’ve become so accomplished that drummer Sean
Greenhalgh even performs on the side as Axl Rose in a Guns N’
Roses tribute band.
Between that and the band’s whirlwind year, it comes as a
surprise that the members of Clap deny feeling like rock stars
now.
“No. (We’ll) probably never (feel like rock
stars),” said Ounsworth. “Not me, anyway.”