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Boston, not Brooklyn
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah let their local roots show
BY ELISABETH DONNELLY
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It’s officially official: all of CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH save singer Alec Ounsworth — he of the David Byrney bleat — have "deep roots" in the Boston ’burbs. The Brooklyn-adopted indie-pop group who’ve got the Internet going nutz had sold out their September 14 T.T.’s show weeks in advance (tickets were going for $60 on Craig’s List), but a week ago last Tuesday when they showed up to play BU’s new "Hip. Hot. Here." concert space — otherwise known as the basement of the George Sherman Union — CYHSY’s blond Sargent twins, Lee (keys, guitar) and Tyler (bass), spilled South Shore pride. (Nantasket Beach, holla!) The Sargents are from Hingham, with prep-school backgrounds to match. (Milton Academy and Nobles, stand up!) Drummer Sean Greenhalgh — who moonlights as "Axl Rose" in the local Guns N’ Roses cover band MR. BROWNSTONE — is from Marshfield. And Robbie Guertin (keys, guitar) holds it down for Belmont. There was even one giddy Clap Your Hands Say Dad in the audience who sweetly confessed that his son’s sudden success has been such a wild ride that he couldn’t sleep properly for a while. The scene at BU was kinda funny. The student programmers had booked a group who’ve recently become, well, too big for student-union basements. But the hype hadn’t spread in time for the first week of school. The early adopters were in place: boys were decked out in their finest Seth Cohen wear (when I was at BU a few years ago, boys dressed like the Strokes); kohl-eyed fashionistas were just waiting for the inevitable move to (or back to) NYC. Down the hall, where I was playing hacky-sack, one girl snooted disdainfully to a friend: "Yeah, they’re called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. And that’s the name of the album. And the first song on the album! Ugh!" While waiting for Philly openers Dr. Dog to come on, kids were overheard referring to the Muppet-esque, New York Times–approved classic rockers as "that Mr. Dog dude." By any name they were underwhelming. Every song was all like, "You’re only living in a dream," or "You’re part of a dream," and their set was ripe for the time-honored indie-geek game of Name That Influence. (Answers: Neil Young, the Beatles, the Byrds.) But when Clap Your Hands took to the stage, the script flipped: there was some interpretive dancing — or whatever you want to call it when someone lies on the floor and pretends to be a lion — and audience members engaged in the (meta?) response tactic of Clapping Their Hands along to the backbeat. On Sunday night, the week-long N.E.S.T. festival was just kicking off, but the show at ZuZu had a weekend wind-down feel. The music of Portland’s BROWNBIRD was especially lovely: these two boys and a girl switched off on cello, banjo, accordion, and guitar, with the resulting orchestral neo-folk sounding like a cousin to Tigersaw and Alex K. Redfearn and the Eyesores. File under "Hymn-like music to dream to." Screw Iron and Wine, people: New England has this nascent trend ’pon lock. Elisabeth Donnelly can be reached at elisabeth.donnelly@gmail.com
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