We Are Hipsters, You Are Not.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah "Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away"

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah "The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth"
[right click to download, ctrl click if yr a mac!]

When bands become an "it" band, I'm usualy hesitant to listen to them. Or if i do hear them I immediately write them off. Something about a band becoming immensely popular make me have disdain for them immediately. I don't know why, I guess its just the snob in me. So when Clap Your Hands Say Yeah became popular last year, I pre-judged them without even hearing them. The many comparisons to the Talking Heads or The Arcade Fire (another band I refused to listen to) only sealed the deal.

It wasn't until much later, thanks to the glorious human achievement that is last.fm, that I decided to give Clap Your Hands Say Yeah a spin. And of course I immediately liked it. I hated myself for it, because they DID sound just like the Talking Heads of yore, and fit in the same scene as the Arcade Fires (yes I eventually broke down and listened to them too, although only because they recorded a live EP with David Bowie, anything he likes is okay with me).

One (among many) reasons I think pop music has gone astray is the fact that there are no more rock bands playing pop music anymore. It's all over-produced Pro Tools greased, singing over the phone with the digital interference filter effect on the singers' voice. In the car the other night, I pulled up along side a guy who was rocking out to John Cougar Mellencamp's "I Fought Authority". Although this is a song I never really cared for, the guy was really putting a lot of passion into it from behind the wheel. This is where I got the notion that pop-rock doesn't exist anymore. Music that had a universal appeal played with guitars, drums and bass had died in the 1980s, and it's a shame because there isn't a purer form of music.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah somewhat achieve the level of pop rock that John Cougar's "Authority Song" does. Although you won't see me rocking out to it behind the wheel just yet. I prefer to rock out to Cheap Trick, thank you very much.