Clap Your Hands Say Yeah may forever be pigeonholed as one of the first “blog bands.” Its self-titled, self-released debut became popular through word-of-blog acclaim upon arrival in 2005. The Philly/Brooklyn quintet, led by Alec Ounsworth, navigated the success well, but 2007’s Some Loud Thunder revealed that CYHSY was as interested in outsider weirdness as it was in indie-pop hooks. Yet it suffered a seemingly inevitable backlash from the fickle blogosphere, as did 2011’s Hysterical. In that LP’s aftermath, the band shed members and disappeared until late last summer, when Little Moments arrived. That four-song EP set the tone for the vibe that threads through Only Run, the new CYHSY album, which updates one of the EP’s songs as its title track. Ounsworth will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com. Read our new CYHSY feature.
Ounsworth: I bought my first amplifier when I was 12 or 13. It was a Peavey Bandit. I still have it but haven’t used it in a while. It projects my favorite sound, but unfortunately it entirely lacks in versatility (a bit rough around the edges to put it mildly). I believe in sounding “good” but think that people often have ridiculous notions of what this means. Some need to resign themselves to the inherent subjectivity of the term and try to capture the whole of what is trying to be presented. Some can’t get over an instrument sounding this way or that and think a certain preamp will save them because so and so used it on such and such. In other words, some can’t see the forest for the trees. What I mean to say is, many think the Bandit sounds like dog shit. I beg to differ.
