Clap Your Hands Say Yeah @Rosemount, Perth (18/11/11)

Mon 21st Nov, 2011 in Gig Reviews

With Harvest Festival taking the east coast by storm at the moment, Perth was lucky enough to get a couple of the bands over this week to play some shows. One of those bands was the Brooklyn based Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

For years, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have been a much-loved band for those who go to Amplifier bar every weekend. With their hits receiving rotation most nights, it was no surprise that the audience gathered at the Rosemount for this particular show were made up of people in their late 20s to those who had just turned 18.

Unfortunately for the only support band, Russian Winters, the Rosemount was empty except for a couple of people who figured it was easier to get to the bar inside than the one in the beer garden. It looked like this would continue for the main attraction as well until five minutes before their set when everyone made their way inside.
The Russian Winters were good and sounded amazing. They didn’t seem to care that no one was watching them and performance wise weren’t deterred by the empty room. Having just released their debut album Last Battles a month ago, they played like a band that has been together for years. Blending dark melancholic rhythms with pop melodies while throwing in a bit of trumpet for good measure. As with most bands that stalwart Luke Rinaldi gets behind, Russian Winters deserve each and every bit of the already high acclaim that they’ve managed to gather in the short time since the launch. If there was any criticism about their set, it was that it was too short. It was only enough to wet the ears and left them wanting to hear more.

After Russian Winters left the stage, it was time for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to set up. Instead of a heap of technicians climbing on stage to fiddle about, there was only one of them and strangely enough, the members of the band to get things organised. After a quick line check, it was then time to get the party started.

Playing a lot from their self-titled album and Some Loud Thunder, it was The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth and Satan Said Dance that received the biggest show of appreciation. The room exploded in a sea of dance and during the chorus of “Satan Said Dance”, vocalist Alec Ounsworth only sang the “Satan” part while the crowd filled in with “Said Dance”.

It is no surprise that Ounsworth’s vocals aren’t exactly the best. He doesn’t sing beautiful melodies that inspire bluebirds to fly in through windows to sit on the shoulders of the singer. He sings in a way that is best described as drunken warbling. It’s often hard to know what exactly he is saying and for this reason it takes a quite attuned ear to take Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s music for an hour. You kind of tend to block his vocals out and focus on the rhythm section in case you go deaf or in fear you may start talking like him.

For the first half hour, the band were silent between their songs. It was almost as if they were shy about the enthusiastic crowd. After a while, they started to warm up and open up with Ounsworth making some remark about how he managed to drop his guitar when the roadie handed it to him mid-song.

As the side doors, the ones bands usually escape through after their set, were closed the band didn’t leave the stage to fake not coming back in order to get the crowd to shout for an encore. They just played straight through until the doors were eventually opened and then disappeared into the night.