Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Familiarity can overshadow even the most vibrant of things in vague shades of grey and as the unfavourably late, post-midnight stage-time for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah approaches, the overcrowded basement of Stealth, populated with cavorting drunks lost in smoky oblivion, seems a too well rehearsed, too predictable a predicament to be in.

For those who are still able to stand without the aid of the person next to them, anticipation filters through the air, in awe of The Most Hyped Band Who Aren’t The Arctic Monkeys™. From indier-than-thou webzines right up to the broadsheet newspapers, via obligatory salivating in the NME, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s spangled dream-pop is capturing the hearts and minds of those waiting anxiously on the brink of the next musical revolution – you know, the one where people finally tire of the vacuous TV-made, disposable pop-products that have dominated the mainstream, turning the word ‘charts’ into a dirty word, instead opening their arms to the insurgence of home-bred, DIY bands that undercut the media machine, offering something fresh, exciting and –most importantly– heartfelt and sincere.

So here we are at Nottingham’s most infamously gritty club night and as speaker stacks emit the opening notes of CYHSY’s brief but befitting set, it feels as if a new era for music is beginning right before your eyes. It’s a modest, earthy euphoria (if you could imagine that such a thing could exist) that evokes such a powerful sense of well-being in the listener. Initially sinister sounding songs ‘Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth’ and ‘Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood’ ultimately concern themselves with the acquittal nature of life, the blamelessness of existence that transpires, despite it so often seeming the contrary. It’s the sort of music that says, “Everything is going to be OK.”

The venue’s lid of familiarity is lifted by the elevated sonic enchantments that fly about the room like benevolent spirits. It is another triumph for music and a triumph for life that made its creation possible. With bands such as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah setting a precedent for what’s to come, here’s a succulent thought to savour: This is only the beginning.

FUTURE GIGS