Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah [CD]

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah has stockpiled a mass of oft-trampled influences, including what amounts to a 12-course meal of in-vogue '80s acts. What's interesting is the manner in which the players assemble this source material. The Cure and the Smiths, for instance, are probed for neither nostalgic angst nor fashion cues. The Reagan-era creepiness that often surfaces when contemporary acts dabble in such sounds in curtailed by Clap Your Hands' apparent affinity for the Clean and other indie slouchers, to say nothing of the harmonica strapped in front of singer Alec Ounsworth's mouth. (Republicans play keyboards, but it takes a socialist to pull of the consecrated harmonica holder.) - Jay Ruttenberg Timeout NY.