Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Some Loud Thunder

Rushing to the fore during 2006 amid much encouragement to light the touch-paper of their whizzbang rocket sending it hurtling skyward to explode in a delight of colours, only to turn around and find that everyone’s switched their attention to the main display over the road (or Arctic Monkeys - Ed), Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s self-released, eponymous debut didn’t quite have the impact it should have. No unanimously rapturous applause, no great gasps of awe and amazement, just a few nice words while few seemed to be listening. Bit of a bugger really.

Not ones to be dismayed, The Clap - as noone calls them - offer a quick turnaround on their second full-length release. Unless we had a duff version, audio levels are distorted, making for uncomfortable listening during the first few playbacks of opener ‘Some Loud Thunder’ until your ears tune in; from the hooks that do manage to push through the muddle, you get the feeling there’s a damn fine song trying to catch your attention.

Slower and lilting to the country-and-western side of town, ‘Emily Jean Stock’ comes as a surprise, as does the quietly understated ‘Mama Won’t You Keep Them Castles In The Air And Burning’, which could be a film score for a perplexed late night journey scenario.

As a straightforward piano, which manages to sound off-kilter, broods like the last waltz of a circus clown on ‘Love Song No. 7’ before a striking vocal circles around, there’s promise in the hills, yet it all stays for a minute too long. A concertina interlude might be a tad conceited in ‘Upon Encountering The Crippled Elephant’, but if it’s good enough for Tori Amos, it’s good enough for us.

A staple of their live set since their UK debut, ‘Satan Said Dance’ sounds restrained, confined by the studio; not allowed to even think about watching Strictly Come Dancing until the final flurry when it sneaks a hold of the remote and banishes Soapstar Superstar away.

The echoing remnants of ‘Some Loud Thunder’ do nothing to make you long for ‘just one more track’. Amongst the setting of the dust of ‘Five Easy Pieces’, the thought which has been sitting underneath throughout raises itself again; whilst an experimental state in varying directions is a much more attractive prospect on paper than a rehashing of their debut, the evolution of CYHSY appears too much like demos at times, and ultimately sounds like a rushed follow-up, patched together from half-ideas and a lack of direction. Not one to pull the bigger boys’ attention back, unfortunately.