The all-encompassing internet buzz that surrounded Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s emergence may have well-and-truly died down by now, with the band on possibly permanent hiatus and frontman Alec Ounsworth’s impressive debut solo album released this year to next-to-no-fanfare, but their debut LP serves as an ample reminder of what got people into such a lather over the band in the first place. ‘The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth’ would have been enough on its own: sounding like a delirious, skewed modern take on New Order’s ‘Temptation’, it was at once anthemic, fiercely original and eminently danceable. On most records it would stick out like a sore thumb, but here it’s simply another stunning track on an album full of them: the chiming, loping glide of ‘Over and Over’, the ragged, harmonica-led rave-up of ‘Heavy Metal’, the giddy, bluesy sway of ‘Gimmie Some Salt’...All brilliant, but perhaps the best moment of all is halfway through the sublime shoegaze bliss-out of ‘In This Home On Ice’, where there’s a mini-breakdown before vocals and instruments lock back in in a moment of sheer sonic ecstacy. At which point you realise that sometimes, the hype is bang-on.
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