CYHSY, from left: Lee Sargent, Robbie Guertin, Alec Ounsworth, Sean Greenhalgh, and Tyler Sargent
TK
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Issue #31
Front man Alec Ounsworth ignores the hype and follows his intuitions
By Caralyn Green
Published: March 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
I apologized to Alec Ounsworth for taking up his time. I wasn’t pulling some rookie move, or faux-self effacement. Our chat, after all, was about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s second album, Some Loud Thunder, and as the band’s commander-in-chief, it was Ounsworth’s duty, nay joy, to advocate on behalf of his Brooklyn/Philly indie-rock ensemble. The hype machine’s particularly fickle to those on the top; so, in addition to writing and performing music, it’s part of Ounsworth’s job to champion CYHSY as still interesting and fun — as still worthy of all that hysteria that accompanied their 2005 self-released, self-titled debut.
Yet time seemed of the essence and an apology seemed necessary. After all, Ounsworth and I talked on January 10, and two days later, the man was getting hitched.
I remember that two days before my friend Anna’s wedding several months back, any phone conversation with her was as stressful as those first suffocating moments after you give a new beau a mixtape including a song with the word “love” in its title.
But Ounsworth? Cool. Cool as could be. Despite a lifelong commitment and a much anticipated second album looming over his head, the dude’s answers were unhurried and introspectively thorough. His humor was gentle but endearingly awkward, and his vocal cadence resembled a drawl, which was kinda surprising given the fact that the guy’s as un-Southern as could be, growing up and still residing in Philadelphia. “It’s a city that makes sense to me in some way, as much as a city can make sense to someone,” he said.
Though perhaps his unruffled calm shouldn’t come as a surprise, given Ounsworth’s well-documented demeanor and voice. He’s got a haphazard aesthetic and languid, vaguely indolent yelp that’s been compared more times than imaginable to that of David Byrne.
At this stage in CYHSY’s evolution, it seems unnecessary to provide musical comparisons (Neutral Milk Hotel? Talking Heads? Tom Waits? And that’s just the first album), or dwell on the band’s Internet-fueled acceleration to fame, which now shines as an enviable paradigm for any startup band with a laptop and some elbow grease. What’s still of note, though, is the band’s unshakable commitment to the DIY movement.
According to Ounsworth, the first album sold something like 300,000 or 400,000 copies — he’s not so sure what the exact number is and doesn’t really seem to care. Not surprisingly, CYHSY has been courted by miniscule and steamroller-sized labels. Did they sign? No ma’am. Are they planning to? Nope.
“I don’t think I could see any reason why we should in fact sign with anyone. It didn’t make any sense. There was nothing anyone could offer us that we couldn’t do for ourselves, so in the end it just so happened that this way was the easier way to be sure to maintain absolute control, which I like to do when I create a project,” said Ounsworth, 29, who laughed in agreement when I called him a control freak. “I think the music industry is changing in such a way as to make everything intuition- and instinct-driven. Everybody’s guessing everything, and it might as well be me that’s doing the guessing.”
Just because they didn’t sign with, say, Columbia Records or even Drag City doesn’t mean the five CYHSY guys are licking stamps and sending MySpace friend requests at three in the morning. They’ve got a publicist, distribution deal, and management. And, although the band manages U.S. distribution of its music, for non-U.S. distro, the five-piece signed with indie British label Wichita Recordings in October 2005, for both their debut album and Some Loud Thunder, because saving the world with rocknroll is a wee difficult when there’s an ocean between you and a portion of your fan base. Also, there’s something kind of awesome about sharing a U.K. home with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Swedish indie poppers Peter, Bjorn & John, and the Philly-based Espers.
Though CYHSY maintained their self-release ethos for Some Loud Thunder, they obliterated their previous DIY recording process. The guys scheduled some intense, between-tour studio time, and brought in experienced producer Dave Fridmann, who’s worked with the Flaming Lips, Sleater-Kinney, Low, and Pinkerton-era Weezer.
Ounsworth — who seems to have the world’s least inflated ego — seemed pretty ambivalent about the one-upped recording process, calling it “an experiment” that he “admitted to and allowed.” “To work with a different sort of budget and [under] different settings is simply adjusting to certain variables that you’re unaccustomed to, which you always have to do with whatever budget you have,” he said. “It’s as hard to work with $50,000 as it is with $50 if it’s something creative.”
I didn’t ask specifics about the budget for Some Loud Thunder. But, armed with the knowledge that the first album — originally conceived as a demo — cost a supposedly meager $8,000 or so to record, I’m guessing Ounsworth might not be exaggerating too much with that hefty figure.
When live, pre-album mp3s, such as tour favorite “Satan Said Dance,” were posted online, fans reactions ranged from tepid lip-biting to adoption of the tracks as their New Favorite Songs of All Time. The blogosphere has certainly shaped the ways we discover and listen to music, so it only seems natural that blog approval — and, conversely, criticism — would affect the ways musicians create their music. However, Ounsworth’s a lot less educated about or sympathetic to the cyber push-and-pull than one might expect.
“I’ve come across a couple of blogs and maybe read through, like, two in my life,” said the man whose name brings up more than 53,000 Google hits. “It seems to me like overhearing a conversation at a bar, which can be interesting, but can also be utterly uninteresting and a waste of time. More often than not, it’s the latter. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I prefer the conversation at the bar. I don’t see why blogs could influence anyone’s decision about how he or she might approach working on something creatively. It doesn’t have anything to do with that. If it does, you probably should be a politician rather than a musician.”
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