Over and Over Again Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Chords
Its title taken from a brusque story past New York writer David Foster Wallace, Alec Ounsworth's sixth album as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah finds him emerging from the trauma of divorce and depression to survey an America he no longer understands. "I think it's probably important to get a fiddling lost in the wood before coming out once more," Ounsworth explains of the painful backwash in which he wrote New Fragility. He's spot on, because that lost period has yielded a considered, expansively crafted album that'due south among the all-time he'due south ever made.
- READ More: The Big Listen: Foo Fighters – Medicine At Midnight
At times, the swirling organs, ringing Americana guitars and driving rhythms evoke the sort of tasteful, widescreen adult-oriented rock purveyed by The War On Drugs; elsewhere, the tenor is far more than sparse and cathartic, Ounsworth's wavering, reedy warble at its most vulnerable equally he tackles both personal pain and a sense of exasperation at his nation's freefall into political polarisation. It's in those more tender, earnest moments that this album really strikes home. It's a long distance from the quirky indie-disco appeal of CYHSY's debut, still past far their near celebrated LP, yet ane Ounsworth has dismissed as "not my favourite".
New Fragility was preceded by the double A-side release of Hesitating Nation and Chiliad Oaks, the opening 2 tracks here. The old is a relentless procession of memories and ruminations, delivered over understated, thoughtful guitar work. Ounsworth gets the difficult questions out in the open up early as he asks, "Who are we to become and make big plans?/ Married in a fever, children in a panic". The sense of remorse is palpable.
The flip side, Thousand Oaks, is the record'south least personal song, addressing not Ounsworth'due south own heartbreak but the spiralling epidemic of firearms deaths in the US. Inspired past an interview with Susan Orfanos, whose son Telemachus was killed in the 2018 Deadline shooting, information technology's just the 2d overtly political song in the band'southward catalogue afterwards Iraq war critique Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood from their debut album. Information technology's brilliantly anthemic with a chugging rhythm, call and response trills and a superb archetype-rock chorus that tips its hat to Bruce Springsteen.
After that emphatic opening, the sonic framework becomes more sparing, the mood more wistful. The boring-waltzing Dee, Forgiven, all heavy acoustic strums and smoky harmonica adornments, is a lovely piece of yearning, pitiful poetry, Ounsworth sounding bruised and battered, "breathing in the morning with cocaine'south wooden stare," using his guitar every bit a tool to conjure ghostly atmospherics.
These are songs with grander horizons than anything Ounsworth has penned before. A string quartet appears for the starting time fourth dimension on the title rails's sorrowful, elegant prequel, Innocent Weight. It'due south one of the near accomplished things the Philadelphia-built-in songwriter has ever put his name to, and it's too dwelling house to the most enthralling solo on the tape, a sizzling take teetering constantly on the edge of boiling over into feedback.
Lyrically, as well, this is a writer at the peak of his powers. "In that location's something familiar in the way that you stapled my wrists to the floor/ merely I cannot put my finger on it," he cries on that aforementioned vocal, finding blackness humour in the most unhappy circumstances. He threatens for a moment to give in to the temptation of grandiosity every bit a snare beat builds irresistibly, but the end is sudden, replaced by the blissful minimalism of delicate piano ballad Mirror Song. A candid Ounsworth, afforded space to breathe, addresses his past cocky, not for the but time on New Fragility, at the peak of his band's fame. Returning home from a European festival advent, he stares into his soul and finds only guilt for feeling so empty. "For a while in that location I had nearly tricked myself into assertive I had some kind of selection," he concludes weightily.
Strings sweep through the sonically lighter CYHSY, 2005 as Ounsworth admits "All I actually wanted to exercise was stay home", revealing both the toll taken by his past and a sense of nostalgia for it. Where They Perform Miracles was born on the route, also, inspired by a visit to a shaman on the outskirts of Mexico Metropolis. Rising steadily from acoustic guitar and swelling organ chords, it's the kind of slow-building, cinematic affective produced so deftly in recent years by alt-country artists such as Strand Of Oaks and Jason Isbell, a lonesome harmonica and resplendent tremolo-soaked chords decorating the spacious environs.
The soul searching reaches a peak on the closing pianoforte confessional If I Were More Like Jesus, mayhap a attain too far into cocky-examination, Ounsworth's vox weathered and coated in baloney. Just it's axiomatic that the time spent lost in the wood has served Clap Your Easily Say Yeah'due south creator and last survivor well. He's obviously suffered these past iii years, only the scars left past those experiences take helped him make his near emotionally mature, affecting record to date.
For more than reviews, click here.
Source: https://guitar.com/review/album/the-big-listen-clap-your-hands-say-yeah-new-fragility/
0 Response to "Over and Over Again Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Chords"
Post a Comment