Thursday, October 20, 2005

Clap Your Hands, Say Ya Wohl Backlash Continuestunin

here and here:

From Nashville Scene:

if you don’t find Alec Ounsworth’s caterwauling whiny and affected on record, check him out live. Last Friday at The Basement, he came off as the poster boy for arty pretentiousness. True, we were among the five or six people who were unimpressed, while about 150 rabid fans seemed to feel it was the second coming of The Beatles in Hamburg. Still, we’re not buying it. Talking Heads, you say? Well, yes, he’s clearly aping David Byrne, but we hear a bit of William Hung in there too. To us, Ounsworth was all quirk and no substance.


and from DCIST, while not so negative (William Hung?), comes this:

Given the praise heaped at the feet of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and the very palpable pleasure their album can induce, it's not unreasonable to hope for some of the rascally fun so vibrantly captured on record to come across live. But between the dead air, the false starts, the seeming lack of rehearsal, and the passive, inert black hole that formed in the middle of the set, that hope was dashed. These guys have the songs, but they don't have the chops. The hype rolls onward, but transcendence will have to wait.
UPDATE: This just in from Tuning Fork where Pitchperfect sees a bright side:
I went home happy because I realized something; CYHSY is like a fly strip. They can distract, collect and trap all these diehard fans and this in turn will free up the rest of the scene for those of us with taste. Ba dum bump. (Thank you, I will be here all week.)


Sorry I missed it (heh), I was rehearsing with my "band"...

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