+ also published on the PixelSurgeon website

There’s a storm brewing… Or is it just intentional sonic distortion?

In the opening song on their debut album, the lead singer of the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah comes forthright with demands � la the late great James “Get on up/I’m about ready to do my thing” Brown. During that initial track of the self-titled album filled with intentionally amateurish marching band clatter and lyrics that allude to either enlightened songwriting or addled drug use, Alec Ounsworth sings, “Clap your hands… Clap your hands… Clap your hands… And away we go.”

The band’s second release, available through Insound (the online indie rock merchandising website), opens quite differently. Instead of inviting you in, the band sets up a virtual velvet rope. “As you can tell from this first track”, they seem to say, “the album’s not gonna instantly gratify your pop junkie needs – you’re gonna have to work at it a little.”

One critic for the New York alt-newspaper, The Village Voice, fell into a soliloquist state when describing that opening title track.

“The title track off Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s sophomore release …” he said, is “all hand claps and cowbells and jangly guitar—fed through a haze of radio static, like it’s crackling between AM channels on a long drive through the desert.”

Later, while listening to the song, I kept thinking of the imagery this reviewer was able to conjure. Clever, I thought – until I realized that he was aided by the equally poetic lyrics: “Like a siren getting louder and farther away from the energetic kids in the park. Yes that was me breaking glass and pretending to start something big, some new taste. Did you wonder? As my voice went from station to station to station to state.”

My home stereo is equipped with nineties shit-in-a-box speakers, so I was not able to detect the much talked about subtle nuances featured on the album; nor was I able to recognize the iTunes effect (it was reported in the New York Times that the band made use of the prosumer software bundled with Apple’s iTunes product to master a few of the tracks featured on the album). It may have been these missing elements that made me question the band like a 1960s Berry Gordy, “Where’s the hit?”

Some Loud Thunder is an album filled to overflowing with deconstructed pop ballads. You find yourself sort of singing along with the crystal clear lyrics yet fail to process the highfalutin musical composition.

Most critics concur, claiming the harmonic distortions to be a purposeful attempt by the band members to estrange themselves by making an album unpalatable to mainstream audiences. If this was in fact the goal during the production of this record then I congratulate them, for after ten or so listens even I, a consumer with eclectic taste, come away with nothing I can hold onto.

Nothing that is, excepting track number five, Satan Said Dance. It’s an odd song, a different odd than the rest of the album. Is it Brooklyn boogie with its bleeping keyboards? Could it by Philly-tinged funk for its disconcerting back-up singers yelling the chorus? Why is this song on the album? Thank goodness this song is on the album.

At first listen I heaped songwriting praise on these hipster rockers. I thought it to be an ode to that most transmutable vegetarian wheat gluten – pure brilliance. Then on closer inspection of the CD insert I noticed that the word was spelled Satan (the chief evil spirit) not Seitan (the vegetarian meat substitute). How genius would it have been if Seitan had said dance? This minor foible made me like the song no less.

Where the band might have faltered in slapstick song titling, they make up for it in song placement. Satan Said Dance is placed close to the middle of the album’s hump. It gets the listener out of the I’ve had enough mode and into a Hey maybe this ain’t so bad one. The song is packed with enough oomph to hydrate the waning pool of curiosity and have you lap up the rest of the album with gusto.

Some Loud Thunder is one of those albums that you have to be dedicated to. It has to grow on you over a long period of time, like fungi or barnacles – slow but inevitable. It’s the album you would expect from a band that fears being pigeonholed too fast, too soon. A departure from the debut Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and a statement declaring, “Hey fans, we’re not just those guys from that first album. We’re multifaceted, we’re quirky, but we’re still cool.”

Listen to a few tracks from Some Loud Thunder on the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah mySpace page by clicking here.