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:
Sly And The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On
Prince’s Sign O’ The Times
Stereolab’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Blue Nile’s Hats
These are albums I came back to again and again during the making of the fourth Clap Your Hands album, Only Run. Of them, I am least familiar with Sign O’ The Times, having heard it first only a few years ago. On Only Run, I often try to mix relatively direct and untreated drum-machine sounds with live drums in such a way that the drum machine guides the way and the live drums come in to surround the song. I know some people might say they hear U2 or Radiohead, which is legitimate and they factor in as well, but Sly And the Family Stone, Stereolab and Blue Nile (and a little Prince) probably more so.
