"And wе're reasoning with messengers..
Who try to pass for grown men!
And they're coming up empty!
And they're sending you their thoughts and prayers!"
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah probably wouldn’t be one of the first five bands out of my mouth if someone were to ask me to make a list of my favorites, and yet their music pops up all the time on my massive shuffle playlist, I’ve seen them more times than any other band except The National, and I would count their first two albums (and this year’s The Tourist) among some of my favorite records in indie rock. There’s definitely something about this band, and Alec Ounsworth’s music, that has stuck with me for years.
There is a tendency to count out a band with their trajectory; big in the mid-00s, they didn’t seem to have much PR staying power by the time their third album, Hysterical, rolled around. But CYHSY have been making great music for the past 12 years, and it’s their second album, Some Loud Thunder, that formed the centerpiece of their December 2 gig at the Brighton Music Hall. I had initially been concerned that the room would be rather empty - last time I saw CYHSY it was a Sunday night in Somerville, and the room was more vacant than when I saw Alec play a living room show in Providence - but, in actuality, the place was packed, more full even than in 2015 when they toured for the 10th anniversary of their self-titled debut. That debut record is generally considered their best work, but there’s a reason music critic Robert Christgau bestowed the same grade (A-) on both CYHSY and Some Loud Thunder - both records represent some of the best songwriting in independent rock from the past decade.
Beginning with a stripped-down, electronic version of the title track, once infamous for the famously jarring distortion that floods your eardrums upon first listen, Alec and band moved through the album quickly, stopping to crack a few jokes about “deep cuts” before and after songs like the ‘Love Song No. 7′ and ‘Upon Encountering the Crippled Elephant’, neither of which they’ve played live prior to this tour (if setlist.fm is to be believed, at least), and both of which evoke a sort of dark carnival vibe, like ‘Clap Your Hands!’ or ‘Sunshine and Clouds’ from the first record passed through a noir filter or three.
The crowd was a tad restrained, as I’ve found typical of Boston crowds - especially in winter - but everyone sang along when Alec stepped out onto the subwoofers and aimed his mic to the crowd for Thunder’s one single, ‘Satan Said Dance’, a Nick Cave-referencing track that moves along with the album’s catchiest groove, as the title might have suggested, and which was lauded as one of Rolling Stone’s 100 best songs of 2007.
Ounsworth and co. rounded out the evening with some cuts from other albums, racing against the DJ-night curfew to fit in ‘Heavy Metal’’ and, my personal favorite, ‘Coming Down’, from the criminally-underrated Only Run. (I’ve secretly always wanted to sing Matt Berninger’s part on this song because (a) my voice is a perfect fit, and (b) I have a secret lust to perform on the stage, but it would be a massively presumptuous thing to ask, of course.) I find it hard to imagine that anyone of any level of familiarity with CYHSY’s music left disappointed tonight. Perhaps CYHSY will never go down in indie rock royalty, but if quiet consistency were king... CYSHY would be a staple of that court.
[As an aside, this is the first gig I’ve done with my Canon 5D Mark III, everything previous was from my 6D.]
