Brooklyn Vegan Presents
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Conversion Party
Mon, August 8, 2011
Doors: 8:00 pm / Show: 9:00 pm
Littlefield$15.00
Sold Out
This event is 21 and over
http://www.littlefieldnyc.com/event/58365/
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Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Their first new album in more than three years, Hysterical marks a major milestone in the continuing evolution of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Born out of an intensely collaborative process in which songs were constructed, dismantled, and then rebuilt anew, the album finds the band – Alec Ounsworth (guitar, vocals), Robbie Guertin (guitar, keyboards), Lee Sargent (keyboards, guitar), Tyler Sargent (bass guitar), and Sean Greenhalgh (drums, percussion) – at their most confident and creative, expertly expanding upon its already distinctive sound. From the chrome-plated licks of “Maniac” and the title track to the sheets of eddying synths and emotive motorik pulsebeats of “Into Your Alien Arms” and “Ketamine and Ecstasy,” the band delivers up sonically provocative pop music that is simultaneously jubilant, mesmeric, and altogether infectious. Hysterical reveals Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to be a wholly developed band in full command of their unique artistic gifts.
“I think with this record I’m starting to finally understand what the identity of the Clap is,” says Ounsworth. “We’re all on the same page now. We’ve stepped back and are able to approach things with a lot more understanding as to what this project is.”
CYHSY first came together in 2004 and quickly earned critical and popular acclaim with the 2005 release of their self-titled (and self-released) debut. They toured nearly non-stop, pausing only to quickly record 2007’s Some Loud Thunder before hitting the road once more. As such, the band were understandably feeling a bit spent when the time came to consider Album No. 3. They briefly began woodshedding material in early 2009 but soon came to an agreement that perhaps a break was in order.
“I don’t think we could’ve come out with a third record around that time and make it work the way it does right now,” Ounsworth says.
“It hadn’t let up at all,” says Tyler Sargent. “We realized it was the wrong thing to do. We didn’t really know how to continue to push it forward.”
The decision was made to take a short hiatus to allow the band members time for general decompression and extracurricular musical activity. In July 2009, CYHSY played Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival and then temporarily closed up shop.
“It helped a lot to get time away from it,” Sargent says. “When you’re playing all the time with one band, you just think about the sound of that band. Whereas if you take some time off, you can do some independent exploration that you can bring back into it.”
“Taking time off, I think everybody developed to a larger degree than if we were to have kept on,” Ounsworth says. “You find yourself in this position where you’re only playing in one particular way. A project can trap you if you don’t try to go in other directions.”
The brief interval served its purpose, instilling in the members of CYHSY a renewed sense of conviction and belief in the band. For his part, Ounsworth came to “an understanding of why the band was important to people and why it is important to people.”
In April 2010, Ounsworth, Greenhalgh, and Tyler Sargent reconvened at Ounsworth’s home studio in Philadelphia as well as at CYHSY’s Brooklyn practice space. Their goal was to build a foundation of songs that could then be developed by the band in total.
“We began making a lot of demos.“ Sargent says, “ We built up a collection of songs that we were happy with.”
The revivified Clap spent the better part of a year fine-tuning the material, recording dozens of different demos for many of the songs, allowing them to veer in multiple directions before settling on what all agreed worked best.
“The band works best together by letting stuff happen,” Sargent says. “That was the problem with the second album, things weren’t allowed to naturally progress. Whereas on this one, they were and so there were a lot of musical ideas generated.”
“The pre-production was extraordinarily important for me,” Ounsworth says, “as far as latching on to how I approach it. I can’t anticipate how Tyler’s going to play, I can’t anticipate how Lee’s going to approach it, and so I’m still a little bit in the dark until we get together. For me, it’s all about us coalescing. “
When it came time to record, CYHSY chose to collaborate with producer/mixer/engineer John Congleton, known for his work with Okkervil River, Explosions In The Sky, Clinic, and The Mountain Goats. They kicked off the sessions in January 2011 with a week’s worth of recording at Hoboken’s Water Music.
“It was a nice process,” Sargent says, “everyone playing together in this big room. It’s not like you have people separated into these soundproof rooms where they can’t really look at each other. We’ve tried that before and it takes away that chemistry. Whereas if you’re sitting in a room together, it’s just much nicer.”
“John has a boundless enthusiasm,” Ounsworth says, “which was helpful for us after doing so much pre-production. He really knows how to push things towards the end, so it doesn’t turn into just doing it, just putting it down. He knows when to say, ‘That’s a good performance but let’s try and get a little bit more of that je ne sais qua.’”
From there, CYHSY headed to Dallas to finish work at Congleton’s own Elmwood Recording. Congleton – who in addition to his Grammy nominated production work also fronts Texas-based indie outfit The Paper Chase – proved especially invaluable to Ounsworth when it came time to track his characteristic vocals.
“It was really helpful for me that John is a singer, so he knows what it’s like,” Ounsworth says. “He knows what the recovery time might be, he knows when to say, ‘I think you can get that better.’ For me, that was enormous.”
With its elegant hooks, simmering atmospherics, and uncommon use of space and intensity, Hysterical widens the band’s idiosyncratic formula, incorporating a remarkably expansive tidal wave of sound, all multi-layered keyboard tracks and big, booming drums. Imbued with sweeping synthesizers, juddering bass, and all manner of percussive dynamics, songs like “Same Mistake,” “Misunderstood,” and the elongated piano-pumping epic, “Adam’s Plane” are marked by inventive and boldly articulated arrangements that form a veritable vortex of melody and rhythm.
The stirring sonics belie what Ounsworth calls “an unsettled quality” to his admittedly opaque lyrical approach, an undercurrent of pragmatic pessimism that permeates songs like “Misspent Youth” and “Idiot” with mystery and inscrutable power.
“As euphoric and optimistic as things might sound,” Ounsworth says, “the idea of tempering that optimism with a little dose of reality has always been of interest to me.”
Having come close to the brink, the extended gestation period that led to the new album sees CYHSY returning to action with rejuvenated strength and a spirit of true intent. With Hysterical, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah came together and crafted something that feels fresh, invigorating and new, no less so than to the band themselves.
”Even after three records,” Ounsworth says, “it almost feels like the beginning.”
“I think with this record I’m starting to finally understand what the identity of the Clap is,” says Ounsworth. “We’re all on the same page now. We’ve stepped back and are able to approach things with a lot more understanding as to what this project is.”
CYHSY first came together in 2004 and quickly earned critical and popular acclaim with the 2005 release of their self-titled (and self-released) debut. They toured nearly non-stop, pausing only to quickly record 2007’s Some Loud Thunder before hitting the road once more. As such, the band were understandably feeling a bit spent when the time came to consider Album No. 3. They briefly began woodshedding material in early 2009 but soon came to an agreement that perhaps a break was in order.
“I don’t think we could’ve come out with a third record around that time and make it work the way it does right now,” Ounsworth says.
“It hadn’t let up at all,” says Tyler Sargent. “We realized it was the wrong thing to do. We didn’t really know how to continue to push it forward.”
The decision was made to take a short hiatus to allow the band members time for general decompression and extracurricular musical activity. In July 2009, CYHSY played Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival and then temporarily closed up shop.
“It helped a lot to get time away from it,” Sargent says. “When you’re playing all the time with one band, you just think about the sound of that band. Whereas if you take some time off, you can do some independent exploration that you can bring back into it.”
“Taking time off, I think everybody developed to a larger degree than if we were to have kept on,” Ounsworth says. “You find yourself in this position where you’re only playing in one particular way. A project can trap you if you don’t try to go in other directions.”
The brief interval served its purpose, instilling in the members of CYHSY a renewed sense of conviction and belief in the band. For his part, Ounsworth came to “an understanding of why the band was important to people and why it is important to people.”
In April 2010, Ounsworth, Greenhalgh, and Tyler Sargent reconvened at Ounsworth’s home studio in Philadelphia as well as at CYHSY’s Brooklyn practice space. Their goal was to build a foundation of songs that could then be developed by the band in total.
“We began making a lot of demos.“ Sargent says, “ We built up a collection of songs that we were happy with.”
The revivified Clap spent the better part of a year fine-tuning the material, recording dozens of different demos for many of the songs, allowing them to veer in multiple directions before settling on what all agreed worked best.
“The band works best together by letting stuff happen,” Sargent says. “That was the problem with the second album, things weren’t allowed to naturally progress. Whereas on this one, they were and so there were a lot of musical ideas generated.”
“The pre-production was extraordinarily important for me,” Ounsworth says, “as far as latching on to how I approach it. I can’t anticipate how Tyler’s going to play, I can’t anticipate how Lee’s going to approach it, and so I’m still a little bit in the dark until we get together. For me, it’s all about us coalescing. “
When it came time to record, CYHSY chose to collaborate with producer/mixer/engineer John Congleton, known for his work with Okkervil River, Explosions In The Sky, Clinic, and The Mountain Goats. They kicked off the sessions in January 2011 with a week’s worth of recording at Hoboken’s Water Music.
“It was a nice process,” Sargent says, “everyone playing together in this big room. It’s not like you have people separated into these soundproof rooms where they can’t really look at each other. We’ve tried that before and it takes away that chemistry. Whereas if you’re sitting in a room together, it’s just much nicer.”
“John has a boundless enthusiasm,” Ounsworth says, “which was helpful for us after doing so much pre-production. He really knows how to push things towards the end, so it doesn’t turn into just doing it, just putting it down. He knows when to say, ‘That’s a good performance but let’s try and get a little bit more of that je ne sais qua.’”
From there, CYHSY headed to Dallas to finish work at Congleton’s own Elmwood Recording. Congleton – who in addition to his Grammy nominated production work also fronts Texas-based indie outfit The Paper Chase – proved especially invaluable to Ounsworth when it came time to track his characteristic vocals.
“It was really helpful for me that John is a singer, so he knows what it’s like,” Ounsworth says. “He knows what the recovery time might be, he knows when to say, ‘I think you can get that better.’ For me, that was enormous.”
With its elegant hooks, simmering atmospherics, and uncommon use of space and intensity, Hysterical widens the band’s idiosyncratic formula, incorporating a remarkably expansive tidal wave of sound, all multi-layered keyboard tracks and big, booming drums. Imbued with sweeping synthesizers, juddering bass, and all manner of percussive dynamics, songs like “Same Mistake,” “Misunderstood,” and the elongated piano-pumping epic, “Adam’s Plane” are marked by inventive and boldly articulated arrangements that form a veritable vortex of melody and rhythm.
The stirring sonics belie what Ounsworth calls “an unsettled quality” to his admittedly opaque lyrical approach, an undercurrent of pragmatic pessimism that permeates songs like “Misspent Youth” and “Idiot” with mystery and inscrutable power.
“As euphoric and optimistic as things might sound,” Ounsworth says, “the idea of tempering that optimism with a little dose of reality has always been of interest to me.”
Having come close to the brink, the extended gestation period that led to the new album sees CYHSY returning to action with rejuvenated strength and a spirit of true intent. With Hysterical, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah came together and crafted something that feels fresh, invigorating and new, no less so than to the band themselves.
”Even after three records,” Ounsworth says, “it almost feels like the beginning.”
Conversion Party
We drank tallboys on the train. We slept on the cramped, plastic seats. We drank coffees. We ate greasy slices of pizza out of cardboard boxes. We took drugs. We threw up. We lugged guitars and amps and patches and pedals. We made it work.
We wrote songs. We practiced them in a dilapidated bathhouse complete with tile pool, power vac, lobster pot, chubblers, gonorrhea infested carpets, tin foil robots, ashtrays and beer bottles overflowing cigarette butts, musical equipment in various stages of decline. We heard death metal shredding when our music stopped.
We got back to the city. We held down jobs. They didn’t mean much. We looked forward to blowing our ears out in an old rotting bathhouse, giving ourselves hernias lifting old amps with silver grills. We had a different definition of a good time.
We came home nauseous, stinking, oily-faced, covered in cat hair, dog vomit. Girlfriends seethed. But the songs were good, like something we’d be glad to find. We decided to keep going.
We got on more trains. We ran through the Great Hall under the starry ceiling. We made them or missed them. We waited for the next one. We drank more beers. We waited for Potter to appear. We waited some more. He did or he didn’t. Potter could practice or he couldn’t.
“It’s a Conversion Party,” Potter said.
None of us knew what it meant. Something about it was funny to him. We liked the name. It stuck.
We screamed in a cavernous room. A Dominican woman came to our cave and listened, leaving us with her products. We drank and drank, trying to take the edge off.
Potter’s kick drum broke. He taped it with tape. It broke again. We stopped. He taped it again. His drums were in his roommate’s car. His drums were in the basement of the Brass Rail. We waited for the drums to arrive. We went to a bar and drank and played bar games. We video-golfed. We video-bowled. The bartender with emphysema ran her nails up my wrist. We waited to play. It got late. Night came. We played. It got later. We missed the last train. We watched the sun come up. We were lost and laughing in the Monday morning crush. We made it to work late. Our job performance suffered. We were always on the brink.
We fought like animals. Drop-down, drag-out fights where we enumerated running inventories of fault. We’d never be friends again. Not like before. We were. Personalities were ciphers, sphinxes, utterly inscrutable. We judged and were judged. We talked about replacing Potter, but we liked his drumming too much.
We wrote more songs. We didn’t know where they came from. They came roaring out of the boredom, like they’d been there all along. We decided to make demos. We decided not to make demos. We decided to make a record instead. We rented the nave of a small stone church, but canceled at the last minute.
Potter was in Bridgeport with Tom. Potter was asleep. Potter was working at the Wine Merchant. He wasn’t answering his phone. He didn’t have a phone. There was nobody home. He was nowhere to be found.
We went to a studio in Philadelphia. It could have been anywhere. We would barely leave one square block. We set up. We went to sleep. We woke up in the morning and drank too much coffee, got spooked. We wouldn’t pull it off. Too jittery, too much nervous energy in the room. We needed to get down basic tracks, but couldn’t. We got one down. Things started to roll. Hours passed strangely with no windows. We went in and did our takes, or waited. We recorded more. We did overdubs. We listened back and grinned. We were geniuses, idiots, savants, handsome auteurs. The drugs wore off, but the songs were still good. We worked and listened back, worked and listened back, until we didn’t trust our ears anymore.
Potter sat on the couch reading Vice. He wouldn’t speak for an hour, and then he’d suddenly look up and say, “No, leave it. It’s good.” We listened. We left it. He sat on the couch not saying anything and then went in and unfurled a wistful guitar part that brought up all the sails on the song. Our ears dropped from our heads like withered fruit.
We worked and listened back, worked and listened back. We went in and did our takes, until we were too fucking tired to do anything else. We waited while everyone else did their parts. We pulled off performances that were beyond our abilities. We were exhausted. It ended and this great wave of sadness washed over me.
We left, recovered, went back. We waited. The tracks came. Can you fix this? Trim that? Back-and-forth, back-and-forth. We waited. Then we held the thing in our hands.
We thought the record would speak for itself. It didn’t. We thought people would hear what we heard. Some did. Most didn’t. We played some shows. A few people came. Not many. We fought some more.
We found out what Conversion Party meant.
We wrote songs. We practiced them in a dilapidated bathhouse complete with tile pool, power vac, lobster pot, chubblers, gonorrhea infested carpets, tin foil robots, ashtrays and beer bottles overflowing cigarette butts, musical equipment in various stages of decline. We heard death metal shredding when our music stopped.
We got back to the city. We held down jobs. They didn’t mean much. We looked forward to blowing our ears out in an old rotting bathhouse, giving ourselves hernias lifting old amps with silver grills. We had a different definition of a good time.
We came home nauseous, stinking, oily-faced, covered in cat hair, dog vomit. Girlfriends seethed. But the songs were good, like something we’d be glad to find. We decided to keep going.
We got on more trains. We ran through the Great Hall under the starry ceiling. We made them or missed them. We waited for the next one. We drank more beers. We waited for Potter to appear. We waited some more. He did or he didn’t. Potter could practice or he couldn’t.
“It’s a Conversion Party,” Potter said.
None of us knew what it meant. Something about it was funny to him. We liked the name. It stuck.
We screamed in a cavernous room. A Dominican woman came to our cave and listened, leaving us with her products. We drank and drank, trying to take the edge off.
Potter’s kick drum broke. He taped it with tape. It broke again. We stopped. He taped it again. His drums were in his roommate’s car. His drums were in the basement of the Brass Rail. We waited for the drums to arrive. We went to a bar and drank and played bar games. We video-golfed. We video-bowled. The bartender with emphysema ran her nails up my wrist. We waited to play. It got late. Night came. We played. It got later. We missed the last train. We watched the sun come up. We were lost and laughing in the Monday morning crush. We made it to work late. Our job performance suffered. We were always on the brink.
We fought like animals. Drop-down, drag-out fights where we enumerated running inventories of fault. We’d never be friends again. Not like before. We were. Personalities were ciphers, sphinxes, utterly inscrutable. We judged and were judged. We talked about replacing Potter, but we liked his drumming too much.
We wrote more songs. We didn’t know where they came from. They came roaring out of the boredom, like they’d been there all along. We decided to make demos. We decided not to make demos. We decided to make a record instead. We rented the nave of a small stone church, but canceled at the last minute.
Potter was in Bridgeport with Tom. Potter was asleep. Potter was working at the Wine Merchant. He wasn’t answering his phone. He didn’t have a phone. There was nobody home. He was nowhere to be found.
We went to a studio in Philadelphia. It could have been anywhere. We would barely leave one square block. We set up. We went to sleep. We woke up in the morning and drank too much coffee, got spooked. We wouldn’t pull it off. Too jittery, too much nervous energy in the room. We needed to get down basic tracks, but couldn’t. We got one down. Things started to roll. Hours passed strangely with no windows. We went in and did our takes, or waited. We recorded more. We did overdubs. We listened back and grinned. We were geniuses, idiots, savants, handsome auteurs. The drugs wore off, but the songs were still good. We worked and listened back, worked and listened back, until we didn’t trust our ears anymore.
Potter sat on the couch reading Vice. He wouldn’t speak for an hour, and then he’d suddenly look up and say, “No, leave it. It’s good.” We listened. We left it. He sat on the couch not saying anything and then went in and unfurled a wistful guitar part that brought up all the sails on the song. Our ears dropped from our heads like withered fruit.
We worked and listened back, worked and listened back. We went in and did our takes, until we were too fucking tired to do anything else. We waited while everyone else did their parts. We pulled off performances that were beyond our abilities. We were exhausted. It ended and this great wave of sadness washed over me.
We left, recovered, went back. We waited. The tracks came. Can you fix this? Trim that? Back-and-forth, back-and-forth. We waited. Then we held the thing in our hands.
We thought the record would speak for itself. It didn’t. We thought people would hear what we heard. Some did. Most didn’t. We played some shows. A few people came. Not many. We fought some more.
We found out what Conversion Party meant.
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