SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH – CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH (20th ANNIVERSARY EDITION)

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH
CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH (20th ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
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There have been a handful of albums across my timeline that have remained both consistent favourites as well as consistently solid listens from top to bottom. It can also be said that this handful of albums share a similar quality in their structure, one almost free of structure and into whimsy and weirdness. Sunset Rubdown have done it, Neutral Milk Hotel have most certainly done it, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah added to that list with the release of their self-titled debut album in 2005 with something that sounded unlike anything before or after.

Now don’t let first impressions get the better of you. This album starts off on a wacky foot with the slightly sinister sounding carnivalesque sermon, “Clap Your Hands!”. Frontman Alec Ounsworth’s high timbre nasal delivery, inviting us to clap our hands feels like a drunken dervish in a tent revival you may not emerge from.

From there, this album takes you on a journey that is a rollicking and fun ride, be it the goofy “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth”, with Ounsworths cracking whine vocals, or “Is This Love?” that is akin to a wagon hurtling downhill, wheels threatening to fly off–yet miraculously it stays the course. Also included is an unreleased original version of “Heavy Metal” that captures a beautiful rawness that the ‘safer’ album version might lack.

Twenty years can date an album in a way that makes it feel like a moment in time where it may be very good while also being . . . dated. And sure, there’s a 2005 quality to the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album, but to this day it plays out like a timeless piece of art created by four young fellers with a limited budget just wanting to get their music out there. “Clap your hands!”

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