Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

A stage adorned with pastel balloons looks like white blood cells floating around this arterial gig, and as lead singer Alex Ounsworth emits his brandishing whine, making pained faces usually reserved for the moment a doctor’s needle enters your vein, it’s as if reliving a day-dream in a prep school Biology lesson. Similarly, like a child’s imagination trying to flee the boredom of the classroom, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah touch upon a rolling wilderness of far away fancy, an impression of an outside that’ll never be fully realised.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the once-cult New Yorkers who rose to infamy via (yep, you guessed it) the Internet had arrived off the back of being featured on Euro Trash, with their eccentric vocals, jangling guitars and a love of tambourines so infectious that it’ll leave you juggling your weinershnitzels in tribute. Ok, they may be lacking the necessary lederhosen and gratuitous pair of over-sized breasts needed to take the analogy to its logical conclusion, but the air of European affection is prevalent over any hipster trappings their US hometown might initially suggest.

‘Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away’, is a suitably ethereal title for the heady indie thumper that sends the first waves of joy through the eager sold-out crowd. The band may look tired and bored but when did you ever have a bad time in the presence of helium filled balloons?

Half the audience are here for the highs, half are here for the (look away now if you’re bored of life) hype. So, like the body of an ant, at the front of the stage collects a mush of life and excitement, the driving force of the show, whilst around the outside collects a hard exoskeleton of gaunt corpses who heard the band was cool in the Observer.

‘Over And Over Again (Lost And Found)’ is hip-shaking melancholy, that rare co-existence fused to musical perfection while set-closer ‘Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood’ sets the show’s peak.

Some of the mystery and far-out depth conveyed on their eponymous debut is sadly lost in their live show. Whilst on record you feel like you’re eavesdropping on a secret world, when seen live this veneer is, of course, destroyed by the five middle-aged men glumly strumming at their instruments.

Never mind as yet more balloons, this time falling from the ceiling into the playful crowd, distract from these moments of disillusionment, and an encore of the absurdly pleasing ‘Clap Your Hands’ has even the stiffest back-of-house critics smiling with glee.

Clap, Clap, Yeah, Yeah – we’re a benumbed lot these days so a few more hand slaps and hearty exclamations can only do us good. Why not have a go yourself?

FUTURE GIGS