Oh yes, a new album indeed (or should I say oh yeah). During the holiday season of 2011, the iconic Brooklyn/Philadelphia based indie group Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (CYHSY) released their long awaited third album, Hysterical. The band hasn’t been remarkably busy; in fact, it is safe to say they haven’t been busy at all. With Hysterical being only their third album on top of being four years in the making, both lovers and haters of the new album are left searching the stars wondering, “What took so long?”
This isn’t necessarily complicated music (at least in a technical, compositional aspect) nor should it be. The charm of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah lies within the plainness of the composition. There’s a very conservative, contained and youthful joy about CYHSY found somewhere lingering and weaving within layers of simple yet delicate chord progressions, graced with airy, tinkling keyboards, and thumping drums that evoke a sense of slow recovery from a high school break up. This “youthful joy” is paired with a melancholy vibe perhaps deriving from the breath like rise and fall of notes that never peak too high, nor sink too low. However it most assuredly comes from the vocal styling of front-man Alec Ounsworth. Ounsworth is CYHSY; his raspy, crooning, frequently cracking voice has come to define and distinguish the band. Being an acquired taste, his voice must be forced to grow upon listeners who aren’t already willing to accept it, and once it has comfortably grown on, the teary-eyed sweet angel howling away becomes audible at last.
However, in listening to Hysterical, it becomes immediately clear to all prior fans that it is Ounsworth’s voice that has made this album sound and feel completely different. Unlike the debut self-titled album from 2005, or the follow up Some Loud Thunder two years later in 2007, Hysterical presents a whole new Ounsworth: one that actually sounds good. Not to say he wasn’t previously a talented singer; he hit and held the notes preciously, and the cracking, crooning, wailing only added to the bands aesthetic (which provides such imagery as a sad country boy wandering through some broken Ohio wasteland). This time around with Hysterical the cracking and crooning that debatably made the band what they are is all gone and out the window. The musicianship and composition of the music itself is great. The band came together and wrote what is musically and lyrically a great album. Hysterical, in keeping the CYHSY tradition is “dancey” and sedated, almost bordering on shoegaze. However, while the individual songs may stand alone as being great, trudging through the album is taxing and tiresome. It’s an average length album, being 13 tracks long, yet upon halfway into the album a break is needed before it all starts sounding monotonous.
Is Hysterical a good or bad album? This question is, of course, completely opinionated and certainly subjective to listener. For first time listeners, the band is a nice easy going indie album and certainly worth checking out. For prior fans, it’s ‘alright’; perhaps the new vocals of Ounsworth distract from making any sort of emotional connection as fans are wondering whether or not they like the new vocals. It’s an album we want to like; after all, there’s nothing not to like about this album. All-in-all, CYHSY is considerably a popular band within the indie genre, yet its long awaited album came and left without basking in the delight of their passionate fans (which a band of this potential should have had their fans raving for months about). It’s a decent album that leaves fans just wanting to listen to the first album, day-by-day getting used to the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.