#11: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are fast becoming the seminal work on why it doesn't often pay, from a dollars-and-cents standpoint, to be involved with a music label today. Though I knew Clap Your Hands Say Yeah was driven by self-pressed records and self-distribution, I still felt like I was in the middle of a full-court promotion press, at least the likes of which Matador or Sub Pop can conjure up.

How so? Because so much of the so-called indie rock scene is driven by a handful of music review websites, good press is everything. And Clap Your Hands Say Yeah had plenty of that. Two other things to consider: First, in an age of internet downloads, could it be good to not, at least initially, be associated with any of them? (According to NPR, the band makes $4 on each album sold... unheard of). Second, as is mentioned in that article, having a goofy name that you have to think about to say correctly helps...

I've read that the band doesn't like to discuss nor point out any influences, but I think musically, an obvious comparison is to a staple of indie worship, those Talking Heads (Byrne's vox, especially). They aren't there yet, but this, their first real release, gets stronger as it goes along. So much so in fact that if I were the label exec accustomed to frontloading records with the "goods," I would have perhaps sequenced it completely backwards. I definitely wouldn't have started with "Clap Your Hands." Or should an album get better as it goes along? And in any case, in the DIY world, who can fault them for doing whatever they want? What a concept.