Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and The National
(with Richard Swift)
The Troubadour, Los Angeles
October 7, 2005

In 2004, The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe and The Dandy Warhols’ Courtney Taylor sparred in the classic battle of The Volatile Genius versus The Reliable Middleweight in Dig!, the second funniest movie about rock and roll ever made. The brunt of the jokes came from Newcombe’s awesome ability to simultaneously surpass BJM’s media hype in his mind while miserably failing it in his music. That magical thinking eventually left him pummeling his own band on stage at one show and ranting about his children to a mostly empty concert hall at another. Meanwhile, the major-label funded Dandies made a bunch of expensive videos that were really popular in Germany.

If 2004 was the Year of the Documentary, then 2005 is the Year of the MP3 Blog, and this new medium has likewise birthed a similar oil-and-water musical rivalry. This time, it’s between the workman-like rock combo The National and fresh-faced David Byrne acolytes Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, whose meteoric rise to internet stardom gave them the unfortunate burden of beating a backlash that started before most fans heard their praises. But in the second and final night of their Troubadour stand, both bands defied expectations by over and underwhelming for the opposite reasons the fly-by-night music media had pinned on them.

Opener Richard Swift was one of many pleasant surprises of the evening. His jaunty Americana act wrapped detail-driven narratives in juke joint pianos and unruly haircuts. But the crowd was obviously there to see if Clap Your Hands would prove more worthy of the rapturous online praise or the less enthusiastic nickname “Clap Your Hands Say…Eh.”

The crowd would have to wait a little longer. Despite their recent signing to Beggars Banquet and the release of their excellent third full length Alligator, The National humbly took the stage second and let the unsigned CYHSY close the show. Rumors of clubs emptying out after CYHSY opened on earlier dates may have prompted the switch, but as soon as The National hit the soaring, U2-jangling chorus of “Secret Meeting,” they commanded the stage like a band who had spent years earning the right to play packed houses. Singer Matt Berninger flailed like a drunk guest at his first wedding, not knowing whether to hide behind cool reserve or to throw everything down on the dance floor. Berninger’s lyrics may occasionally venture into non-sequiter territory about bodyguards and revolvers, but on the more upbeat guitar-rock tunes like “Slipping Husband,” he swung wildly from demure ringleader to howling banshee, and you couldn’t look away.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah followed with the exact opposite act- that of a cocky young group with talent oozing out its pores but with zero concept of running a tight ship as a live act. The band, quite simply, could not get its shit together. When actually playing the best tunes from their eponymous debut, they were obviously tickled with the crowd’s giddy reception and returned the favor justly. “In This Home On Ice” and “Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood” gave singer Alec Ounsworth a chance to furrow his beetle-brow and belt out his barely-tonal yelps with abandon, and his band’s blissy wall of fuzz and keyboard blips rendered those early Arcade Fire comparisons worthless aesthetically, but useful in capturing the spirit of a band firing on all cylinders.

But between songs, the band would often take close to thirty seconds to tune, wander about the stage, adjust knobs and whisper things to each other. Before “Details of the War,” Ounsworth actually stopped the set so he could run upstairs into the artists’ VIP lounge to grab a harmonica he had forgotten. It was a mistake that any young indie band could have made, and while it threw off the set’s rhythms the flub reminded the audience that Clap Your Hands is still quite new at this. You can’t fault them for being young, but their mistakes only underscore the reasons why they can barely save their own hour-long set, alone rock music of the modern day.

Unlike The Brian Jonestown Massacre, there were no onstage brawls at The Troubadour among CYHSY. And unlike The Dandy Warhols, The National aren’t scoring any car commercials yet. But both sets further proved the adage that you’re never as good as you think you are or as bad as others might say. Even if they say you’re a 9.0 out of ten.

By August Brown

www.clapyourhandssayyeah.com
www.americanmary.com

11/2005