Alec Ounsworth believes in taking chances. The serious-minded frontman of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah wasn’t content with simply repeating the success of the band’s eponymously titled 2005 breakthrough album on this year’s follow-up, Some Loud Thunder. In fact, if he’d gotten his own way, the second CYHSAY release would’ve been a noise album.
“Not like Metal Machine Music,” Ounsworth says in a telling reference to Lou Reed’s feedback-driven opus that once sounded like a career suicide note. “But of people walking into the studio and stuff like that. I told some people about it, but they never really responded. But the time has passed now, so it won’t happen.”
As it turned out, Some Loud Thunder sounds not unlike its predecessor, in that it’s a whirligig of left-field indie vaudeville with Ounsworth’s plaintive bloodrush vocals pushing things along. Not that this was CYHSY kow-towing to record company diktats. As one of the first genuine acts to make real headway online, the band may be signed to Wichiita records in this country, but are pretty much left to their own devices. This is something Ounsworth clearly relishes.
“Nobody else told us what we should or shouldn’t do,” he says. “That’s the luxury of this band. There are a lot of bands I know who put out good albums you can sing along to – and we’re guilty of that up to a point – but I much prefer bands who want to push themselves to either do something that’s brilliant or something that’s awful. People shouldn’t sign up to be musicians not to take chances.”
When Ounsworth talks like this he clearly recognises the limitations of the three minute pop song format, but wants it to be taken seriously on its own terms as well.
“The question that needs asked,” he asserts, “is how comfortable anyone is with success. Is it good to play in front of thousands of people? Or should I be ambitious for thousands of people to not see us in a few years time? The ambition really is to make an album creative and do it how you want to. I’m not saying record something using some diminished minor chord just to sound dark and artistic, but if we take the big chances I’d like to take, chances are not everyone will want to listen to it.”
Ounsworth started playing piano aged six, and was brought up on what he calls “the oldies. R n’B, Ray Charles, Beach Boys, Beatles, and for some reason it really stuck.” At high school he took up Dixieland guitar, though his musical epiphany came after he discovered records by The Velvet Underground, Television and Patti Smith.
Chances informed Ounsworth’s work from the start, after he first bumped into future band member Lee Sargent while visiting his sister. Ounsworth remains a singular personality, still living in Pennsylvania while the rest of the band stays in New York. This summer he’s spent time playing and recording with old friends.
“I have a bunch of old songs,” he says, “and, as attached to them as I am, I’ve decided to purge myself of them and move on. I don’t know what form that will take, but I may release a really limited number of albums under another name.”
Inbetween making music, Ounsworth is dividing his time listening to either Arthur Lee’s love, a Jellyroll Morton box set or Brian Eno, who days he’s listening to “severely.”
Again, Ounsworth’s tastes illustrate his desire to swing between the two extremes of pop and art.
“it’s about taking a leap of faith,” he says. “I suppose I just want to hear something I’ve never heard before.”
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah play the Main Stage of Indian Summer, Victoria Park, Glasgow, on Sunday
The Herald, July 12th 2007
ends
“Not like Metal Machine Music,” Ounsworth says in a telling reference to Lou Reed’s feedback-driven opus that once sounded like a career suicide note. “But of people walking into the studio and stuff like that. I told some people about it, but they never really responded. But the time has passed now, so it won’t happen.”
As it turned out, Some Loud Thunder sounds not unlike its predecessor, in that it’s a whirligig of left-field indie vaudeville with Ounsworth’s plaintive bloodrush vocals pushing things along. Not that this was CYHSY kow-towing to record company diktats. As one of the first genuine acts to make real headway online, the band may be signed to Wichiita records in this country, but are pretty much left to their own devices. This is something Ounsworth clearly relishes.
“Nobody else told us what we should or shouldn’t do,” he says. “That’s the luxury of this band. There are a lot of bands I know who put out good albums you can sing along to – and we’re guilty of that up to a point – but I much prefer bands who want to push themselves to either do something that’s brilliant or something that’s awful. People shouldn’t sign up to be musicians not to take chances.”
When Ounsworth talks like this he clearly recognises the limitations of the three minute pop song format, but wants it to be taken seriously on its own terms as well.
“The question that needs asked,” he asserts, “is how comfortable anyone is with success. Is it good to play in front of thousands of people? Or should I be ambitious for thousands of people to not see us in a few years time? The ambition really is to make an album creative and do it how you want to. I’m not saying record something using some diminished minor chord just to sound dark and artistic, but if we take the big chances I’d like to take, chances are not everyone will want to listen to it.”
Ounsworth started playing piano aged six, and was brought up on what he calls “the oldies. R n’B, Ray Charles, Beach Boys, Beatles, and for some reason it really stuck.” At high school he took up Dixieland guitar, though his musical epiphany came after he discovered records by The Velvet Underground, Television and Patti Smith.
Chances informed Ounsworth’s work from the start, after he first bumped into future band member Lee Sargent while visiting his sister. Ounsworth remains a singular personality, still living in Pennsylvania while the rest of the band stays in New York. This summer he’s spent time playing and recording with old friends.
“I have a bunch of old songs,” he says, “and, as attached to them as I am, I’ve decided to purge myself of them and move on. I don’t know what form that will take, but I may release a really limited number of albums under another name.”
Inbetween making music, Ounsworth is dividing his time listening to either Arthur Lee’s love, a Jellyroll Morton box set or Brian Eno, who days he’s listening to “severely.”
Again, Ounsworth’s tastes illustrate his desire to swing between the two extremes of pop and art.
“it’s about taking a leap of faith,” he says. “I suppose I just want to hear something I’ve never heard before.”
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah play the Main Stage of Indian Summer, Victoria Park, Glasgow, on Sunday
The Herald, July 12th 2007
ends
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