Album Review Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - New Fragility

With Alec Ounsworth the sole remaining member, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah has, for the last few years, existed for all intents and purposes as a platform for the Philadelphian to run unchecked without much impulse to deviate from the expected. Following a series of patchy releases, ‘New Fragility’ strives for structure, toggling between social awareness and slack harmonies in an interplay that never fully attains the unity it craves. A need to tackle current pressing concerns does, however, work to its credit: ‘Thousand Oaks’ confronts the ever-present threat of gun violence in the US and political inaction, sobering and much-needed commentary that lapses into plodding nod-offs such as ‘Dee, Forgiven’, a listlessness that succeeds in dragging the title track into a similar state of drift. Winding orchestral flights propel ‘Innocent Weight’, in part redeeming an effort that covers little in the way of new ground, while timely lyrical takes command attention yet lack the frequency to shake off neighbouring songs sinking under their own unwieldy mass. Alec’s wavering holler remains stubbornly distressed, if a little paler – fundamentally so when stacked up against the endearingly kooky promise of CYHSY’s 2005 debut.