Two fifths of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah leave the band
Come on, NME - this isn't the time for fractions. It's clearly time for pie charts:
So, why are they off? Guertin:
"Being a member of Clap has been an incredible experience, but I have decided to move on and see what's next. I will continue to make music with my other band, Radical Dads, pursue miscellaneous artistic endeavors, and also grow some vegetables. I am excited to see what else might come my way. Maybe some tomatoes?"
The phrase "A member of Clap" is surely enough in its own right to justify quitting.
Sargent's departure he explains like this:
"I am very proud of what this band has accomplished over the past eight years, and I will miss playing with such talented musicians. I wish Alec, Sean and Lee the best of luck with whatever CYHSY does in the future.
I wish Robbie the best of luck with his musical and horticultural endeavors. As for me, I am currently in the process of forming a presidential exploratory committee for 2016."
Given the number of instruments Guertin played, CYHSY will be shortly advertising for about seventy-six replacement members.
Oh, and if Satan said throw yourself under a bus, would you do that, too, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? Oh, you would, as that's the nature of hearing voices from Satan? Oh.
Brooklyn Vegan has heard a rumour that the current Clap Your Hands Say Yeah dates might be the last before a rest. Or even a permanent rest:
The rumor is that they've nixed plans to go back into the studio, and that they have no further dates scheduled. I'm not saying I'm 100% positive this is the last we'll see of them, but it seems likely the show will be the last chance to see them for a very long time, if not ever.
It is just a rumour, then. But BV tends to have a finely-tuned ear for this sort of thing.
A splash of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, a dash of Au Revoir Simone, and you've gotten yourself an indie supergroup. WFMU had them in session and they're sharing the whole lot with you.
I don't often just dump entire press releases straight into the stream, but the news of the forthcoming not-written-by-Radiohead Choke soundtrack contains the following track-by-track guide to the album, with commentary by director/screenwriter Clark Gregg, which is that odd thing - press blurb that's worth reading:
Ben Kweller - "The Rules"
Ben Kweller kicks ass. These lyrics feel like Victor Mancini's rowdy, pissed-off subtext. I love that it starts off the soundtrack with some slamming indie rock and that it comes in during the colonial village while we're looking at all the puffy shirts and bonnets.
The Natural History - "Don't You Ever" (rare)
I only found this band recently, but I listened to them all through post. Max Tepper's vocals are superb. I actually prefer this version to the one by Spoon and I'm a huge Spoon fan. The band broke up a few years ago. I'm going to picket their houses until they get back together.
Fiery Furnaces - "Navy Nurse"
This groove just takes your breath away.
Radiohead - "Reckoner"
Like most people, I am a huge Radiohead fan. The adaptation took me years to write so I wrote it first to Kid A, then Amnesiac and then Hail to the Thief. Later, I learned from Chuck Palahniuk that he had written the novel while listening to their song, "Creep." In Rainbows came out while we were editing and I used almost every track in my early temp cuts of the movie. They all fit really well, but I particularly loved "Reckoner." The tension between Thom Yorke's keening vocals and Phil Selway's brilliant, driving drum track fit so perfectly that it worked almost like score. I was truly dreading the day when we'd have to take it out. Somehow ATO Pictures producer, Johnathan Dorfman persuaded their manager to show the band some footage and to our shock they were generous enough to let us use the song. It's a monumental addition to the movie.
Alap Momin - "Sin Terror"
I love this jam. We needed music for the strip-club scenes and music supervisors Lyle Hysen and Ken Weinstein knew Alap Momin from the band Dälek and he was kind enough to cook this up just for the movie. He even tailored the tracks to the scenes. The driving discordant build they layered into this piece feels like it's feeding the tension between Denny and Victor.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - "Satan Said Dance"
I loved their first album and we needed something dark but not too heavy for Victor's sudden rollercoaster ride back to the dark side. Hysen and Weinstein pitched this song and when we saw it over the scene it was just right.
Buzzcocks - "Orgasm Addict" (rare)
This is the anthem. I sort of grew up loving The Buzzcocks, moshing my way through their songs in the East Village. I must have played it every day I was writing "Choke." I always thought we'd open the movie with it, but it didn't work out. In any case here is a cool alternate version with a more deadpan feel and at least it made it on to our soundtrack.
Death Cab For Cutie - "No Sunlight"
What can you say, they're just really, really good.
Blitzen Trapper - "Wicked" (unreleased)
We listened to a lot of Blitzen Trapper during the crazed five-week summer shoot. It just seemed to fit with spending your 18-hour days in a sweltering mental hospital. They've got some excellent chaos going on.
Ms. Tyree Sugar Jones - "If You Feel It"
This plays in another tricky scene where everything we tried felt wrong. And then I got turned on to the soulful sexy stylings of Ms. Tyree "Sugar" Jones. You put this on and you know some clothes are coming off.
My Morning Jacket - "Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt 1"
We're all big Jacket fans. Listened to them constantly during the shoot. Very proud to have them on here.
Shout Out Louds - "Bicycle" (rare)
Nothing like a little kick ass Swedish indie rock. They're like The Shins' attitudinal Scandinavian cousins.
Twilight Singers - "There's Been An Accident"
One of the producers, Contrafilm's Beau Flynn, and I have been Greg Dulli fans for years. I listened to The Twilight Singers a lot when I was writing the script. The song is really moving in a haunting, portentous way that really works for the movie.
Nicole Atkins - "Crystal Ship" (unreleased)
Brilliant. She's got a great torchy, Peggy Lee sound with just enough tongue in cheek to feel like a perfect citizen of the Palahniuk world.
In the latest Guardian Music blog, Alan McGee sounds a deathly warning against hype. "Would you put your life in the hands of these rock and roll bands?", he asks, a not-very-subtle reminder of the band he put his pension scheme in the hands of, before kicking off a list of some of the much ballyhooed acts who flopped - Sigue Sigue Sputnik, The Roaring Boys, Orlando. That sort of thing. There's no room, oddly, for references to Baby Amphetamine, or the other bands that he pushed himself despite their lack of saleability; nor the Ozymadiantics of post-Definitely Maybe Oasis - Knebworth, surely, being a working example of what happens when you over-inflate the myth.
What really marks out the piece, though, is the opening, where McGee kicks the shit out of two of his own acts - two of the bands whose presence on the Creation roster made it impossible to dismiss the label as simply the packaging of nutritionally questionable fayre it had become by the time it ended:
Highlights of my hyping skills include talking up Kevin Shields to be a Brian Eno-like genius (when in fact you could put a monkey in the studio with Alan Moulder and make it sonically interesting), and the Boo Radleys, who were signed to demonstrate to Kevin that I could take anybody doing "his" music and make it a number one.
Although, of course, the Boo Radleys never had a number one single, and their number one album was the least Valentines-esque collection they ever turned in. Still, it's nice that McGee is keen to distance himself from the records which we used to have admit gave him a grudging claim to care about music - and it answers the question of how he could have put out Be Here Now with a straight face. It's the sound of calculators.
And his view of the current music scene is equally odd:
Now the internet is such well-trodden territory, death by blog-hype is becoming de rigueur. Both Beirut and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah had been called the indie second coming, and enforced an A&R policy of "Sign anything above an eight in Pitchfork" that caused certain bands to be picked up and dispensed with very quickly. Beirut's poor live performances were his death knell while Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's second album was (perhaps unfairly) dismissed.
Beirut, surely, is something of an acquired taste - Zach was never going to be a David Hamilton hotshot or play the lottery show, and it seems a little odd for McGee to be sniffly dismissing him after one album - not to mention that 4AD hardly oversold that one.
And who called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah "the indie second coming" anyway? Not to mention that per McGee's opening gambit, I might not put my life in their hands, but I'd certainly bet on them giving me a better evening or two than anything on Poptones.
The comments box on the blog has been overflowing with responses, but the sweetest of them all is a simple link to this, on YouTube. We're not entirely certain, but we think it might proves that Creation records was founded on the income McGee generated from his time as the Hofmeister bear:
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