I'd Love to Turn You On #246: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (2005)

It’s 2005: the Internet is skyrocketing, New Orleans is underwater, and the War On Terror is in full swing. America the Cultured is in a cultural ditch: Destiny’s Child is breaking up, Flavor Of Love is in pre-production, and in his first televised bed-shitting, Kanye alleges that the POTUS is a racist. On the other side of the pop spectrum, Rock’n’Roll has gone full-on Sad-Boi™ and seems to have completely sold itself to corporate media. Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco are being crammed down the throat of nearly every emotional pre-teen and baggy-eyed Clear Channel jockey out there, driving them both to suicide. Between looming threats of another 9/11 and another forced serving of “I CHIME IN,” it was a scary time to be a young American – yet this national state of paranoia could never be enough to faze socially awkward college kids with dial-up connections. A smart, college-educated Brooklyn hipster like Alec Ounsworth, for example, is far too busy playing and promoting his band’s debut, chock full of weird guitar songs about young love and “…Young Blood” to Manhattan crowds that are growing larger and more prestigious by the night. (Imagine singing, “You look like David Bowie”, directly to the David Bowie....)

Originally released in June 2005, the self-titled debut from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah sounds as chameleonic as it does disciplined, and its distinctly “indie” lore remains intact to this day. Following exceptionally positive online buzz and culminating with a glowing review from an increasingly influential webzine called Pitchfork Media, demand for the album became so large that the band had to reprint and reissue the disc altogether, selling over 40,000 copies on their own by the end of September. They signed a deal with UK indie Wichita Records in October only as a means to get the physical disc across the pond. What started as a way for Ounsworth to channel his love of quirky 70’s/80’s new wave and 90’s alternative morphed into one of the Internet’s first overwhelming musical sensations – something reveled by both no-name bloggers and heavy-hitting industry titans (like Bowie and David Byrne who were both spotted at the band’s Manhattan shows).

In other words, freedom from the influence of label heads and industry execs allowed CYHSY total creative freedom, and this quality is immediately evident to the listener. The album’s off-kilter, unorthodox feel can be heard straight away in the eponymous opening track. On “Clap Your Hands!” a carnival Wurlitzer lays the red-paisley carpet for Ounsworth, the madcap master of ceremonies whose lyrics throughout the album are as nonsensical ("betray white water, delay dark forms") as they are woke ("Should I trust all the rust that's on TV/I guess with some distaste I disagree"). The record’s lyrical pinnacle is born on the powerful, Dylan-esque “Details Of The War”; here Ounsworth’s warbled “mezzo-tenor” croons “Nakedness, a flying lesson/Tattered dress, sunburned chest/You will pay for your excessive charm.”

After a point, it becomes futile to trace the sonic influence of CYHSY, as any two record connoisseurs will ultimately come up with different sources. While Ounsworth’s vocals do draw obvious comparisons to Byrne, and nods to Berlin-era Bowie are scattered throughout the otherwise sparse arrangements, the record also qualifies as an indie/alternative funhouse. Perhaps the most agreeable influence is that of Frank Black, whose Pixie-dust is sprinkled on the heavier, guitar-oriented tracks (“Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away,” “In This Home On Ice”), although another listener could easily make an argument for Pavement, or even Yo La Tengo at their loudest. The sonic sources become more ambiguous as the group channels everything from Stereolab (the euphoric “Is This Love”) to the Cure (the goth-pop of “Over And Over Again”), and utilized everything from toy pianos (“Sunshine And Clouds”) to digital Theremins (“Heavy Metal”). The album’s most ear-catching sound is the 8-bit synth patch heard on its only single, “By The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth,” which sounds like the soundtrack to your favorite old Game Boy game.

In this day and age, where every self-righteous “gifted” millennial is pirating Ableton on uTorrent and publicly claiming they’re about to produce the next channel ORANGE, the grassroots creation of CYHSY seems almost too good to be true. Although M.I.A. had blown up MySpace in the year prior, and the Go! Team had received serious praise from mp3 blogs, there had yet to be an unsigned act that tapped into musical virality. Even Merge, a renowned indie, was driving the seismic impact of the Arcade Fire. To that effect, CYHSY is one of the first and most lasting testaments to the power of post-millennium DIY culture; its recording and release chronicle a young band’s journey from virtually unknown local favorites to international sensation in the matter of weeks. It’s not quite Beatlemania, but the thing that hooked people onto CYHSY – what set them apart from the pack – was their status as a totally organic, bare-bones guitar band that built their sound, image, and promotional material all on their own apart from any major external force. Additionally, the one force that did catapult this group into the spotlight from obscurity was an exponentially budding music blogosphere that had not yet been swayed by money and corporate interests.

The main lyrical theme of the album – the disillusionment of intelligent youth, poor and heartbroken, in a superficially materialistic Western society that lives in constant fear of mass destruction – is something that is transcendent in the best of all Western pop music, yet Ounsworth’s freewheeling energy and epileptic delivery make these age-old themes seem urgent and uniquely contemporary. Still drunk off the mercurial splash that was Funeral, journalists and A&R men everywhere were desperately looking for an answer to the Arcade Fire, and (if you asked Bowie/Byrne) Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were it. In sound, structure, and style, this is as indie as it gets.

- Ethan Griggs

I'd Love to Turn You On #148 - Brian Eno/David Byrne – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

After Talking Heads released their fourth album and masterpiece, Remain in Light, the band went on hiatus while its members explored side projects. Guitarist Jerry Harrison released The Red and the Black, an underrated solo album which built on his work with The Modern Lovers and Talking Heads. Rhythm section and married couple, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, formed Tom Tom Club with Tina’s sisters and members of the Remain in Light touring band. Tom Tom Club’s debut functions like a release valve for the pressures building on Remain in Light and endures as a funky, energetic party album. Lead singer David Byrne and Brian Eno, producer of three Talking Heads albums, set off to create an album that draws upon similar archetypes as Remain in Light, but stands apart from anything these considerable talents have created before or since. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts sounds like Byrne and Eno discovered a way to tune into the radio signal of this entire planet and distill it into 40 minutes of genre-blurring, hypnotically engaging, and beautifully layered music.

Three and a half decades after its release, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts remains a ground-breaking and brilliant tangent from the minds of two of the most idiosyncratic and cerebral artists in popular music. Whereas Tom Tom Club seized upon the incredible pool of talent that had formed around Talking Heads and aimed it in a loose, upbeat, and fun-loving direction, Eno and Byrne set out on a concentrated, enigmatic, and exploratory mission into the unknown. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts contains some of the same DNA of poly-rhythms, experimentalism, and pastiche as Remain in Light, but this album grows into its environment without the frames and guidance of Byrne’s observational characters or recognizable song structures. Although both Eno and Byrne were known at this point for their skills and abilities as lead singers and songwriters, it may come as a surprise to some that this album features neither their voices nor their lyrics. The album’s liner notes credit both Brian Eno and David Byrne with, “guitars, basses, synthesizers, drums, percussions, found objects.” In place of Eno and Byrne’s vocals, nine of the eleven songs on the album contain elements cited in the liner notes as “voices” and include samples of radio hosts and callers, preachers, an exorcist, and singers from Egypt, coastal islands near the state of Georgia, and Lebanon. Among the eleven musicians who worked with Eno and Byrne on this album, eight are percussionists and three play bass. Eno and Byrne combine this robust rhythmic engine with the found, fragmented vocals to create a set of self-contained, evocative snapshots that, when regarded as a whole, reflect back to the listener like a mosaic formed from the pieces of a broken mirror.

Eno and Byrne reunited in 2008 for Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, an album that serves as a high point for both artists’ output in the last twenty years but bears no discernible connection to their first collaborative album. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today features some of Eno’s best recent production work as well as some of Byrne’s most natural vocals and most compelling lyrics since Talking Heads, but feels strangely orthodox and prosaic compared to the radical poetry contained within their first joint musical endeavor. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts merges elements of art rock, experimental music, funk, electronic music, African pop, folk music, field recordings, and minimalism into a highly influential sum, but few of its successors can compare with this fascinating musical exploration.    

John Parsell

I'd Love to Turn You On At the Movies #131 - Stop Making Sense (1984, dir. Jonathan Demme)

I assumed that anyone who had an interest would have seen this film by now, but I keep meeting people who haven’t seen it – fans of the Talking Heads even – so it felt necessary to write it up. If you’ve seen the film, you know about its irresistible energy, the joyous feel of the music (even when the band gets strange), the magnetic wonder of David Byrne’s performance. But maybe it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, or maybe you’ve never seen it. If so, this review is for you.

In late 1983, the Talking Heads were riding their most successful album to date – Speaking in Tongues – which charted higher than any of their previous albums and contained their first top ten hit with “Burning Down the House.” With these accomplishments under their collective belt they decided it was time to make a concert film to document the band in one of its most exciting incarnations. To take the directing reins they hired Jonathan Demme, who worked with Byrne and the group to design a film that, unlike most rock docs, almost never takes us out of the performance for interviews, audience shots, or extraneous images. They also spent a lot of the film’s budget (raised by the band) on recording the sound with then-new digital technology and the expenditure paid off handsomely – this hardly sounds live at all and it takes full advantage of the audio capabilities of both DVD and Blu-ray. The core of the group is of course the quartet – David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, and Jerry Harrison (in that order, as we shall see) – but here they’re augmented by extra percussion (courtesy of Steve Scales) extra guitar (Alex Weir sometimes chugging rhythm, sometimes playing the Adrian Belew role, sometimes shredding in his own style), extra keyboards (P-Funk’s synth wizard Bernie Worrell), and extra vocal support (Edna Holt and Lynn Mabry singing backing and harmony vocals). And Demme (along with cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, famed for his work on Blade Runner) have a gift for staying out of the way of the band while still putting us right in their faces to capture the energy of the performances. Demme also made the wise decision in the editing process to favor long takes and hand held camera to keep you in the moment – against the grain of the current MTV era of rapid fire, quick cut video editing.

The film begins with a shot of the floor at the front of what we’ll soon find out is a barren stage. A pair of sneakers – belonging to David Byrne – walk into the frame. The camera follows then to a mic stand and a boombox is set down next to the mic. Byrne’s voice announces “I have something I want to play for you” and he presses play, starting a rhythm over which his voice and guitar start to play “Psycho Killer” as he sometimes stands at the mic, sometimes stumbles and dances goofily around the stage. When he’s done Tina Weymouth walks out on stage, bass in hand, and joins him for a duet on the great song “Heaven.” As the song nears its end, roadies roll out risers and a drum kit and then Chris Frantz comes out – in his blue polo shirt, the only one not dressed in the industrial, neutral colored outfits that the rest of the performers are – and bounds up behind his kit to fire up the early Heads song “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel” as the trio that the band originally was. After the group had worked a while as trio, Jerry Harrison joined to make them a quartet and to signify it he’s out on stage next on guitar to join them for “Found A Job.” After they finish most of the rest of the band comes out, the curtain drops, blocking the open background for the first time and they kick into “Slippery People” from the then-new Speaking in Tongues album. Meanwhile Byrne gets goofy, dancing with the other singers, and everyone on stage feels the rhythm. For “Burning Down the House,” the last of the performers hit the stage and the full band kicks into high gear, with Byrne even running laps around the risers for the next tune. Though Byrne’s twitchy energy is often the focus, Demme wisely cuts away to give everyone featured time onscreen because they’re all clearly having a blast and the energy from all quarters is infectious. At the midpoint, Byrne yells into the mic “Thank you! Does anybody have any questions?” and there’s a quick fade to black. The film fades back up on a series of visual projections and the show is now in a higher gear too – adding in an additional visual component to augment the music. It hits a high during “What A Day That Was” (from Byrne’s excellent 1981 solo album The Catherine Wheel) where the band is lit from below by strong lights that cast giant moving shadows behind them. The focus is on Bernie Worrell later as they roll into “Once In A Lifetime” but Byrne’s eccentric movements (partially recreated from the video) again pull the focus up to the front line. As the film rolls out to a close, the energy remains high, going through a Tom Tom Club solo spot, Byrne wearing (and then slowly discarding) the film’s famous “Big Suit” during “Girlfriend Is Better,” an extended workout on their version of Al Green’s “Take Me To the River” and the closer, “Crosseyed and Painless,” which ends things on an energetic high before fading back down to the sounds of the boombox beats from “Psycho Killer” as the credits roll.

Writing about it can’t possibly do it justice. It’s a viscerally exciting audio-visual experience from beginning to end and if you haven’t seen it you owe it to yourself to witness what film critic Leonard Maltin (in one of the few times I agree with him) called “one of the greatest rock movies ever made” and critic Pauline Kael called “close to perfection.” They’re right - I can’t think of a better concert film that exists, rock or otherwise.

-Patrick Brown

I'd Love to Turn You On #71 - Tom Zé – Brazil Classics 4: The Best of Tom Zé

Most Brazilian pop we hear up north here comes at you two ways – either in its subtle, silky smooth bossa nova style, or in the drum-heavy, rhythmically charged sambas of the urban centers. But once upon a time in the late-60’s there was a group of musicians who called themselves tropicalistas. They dubbed their movement Tropicália, a youth-lead movement that incorporated hidden political lyrics and any sounds they liked into their music – especially American and British Rock and R&B, but also including the bossas and sambas of Brazil, even if they sometimes thumbed their noses at tradition. But where many of the others in the group stuck closer to Brazilian tradition or to rock and roll, Tom Zé utilized his schooling in music theory plus his love of traditional musics to create something altogether odder, utilizing not only the music he grew up with, but also advanced Western classical music. What’s unique about Zé is that for all his experimental impulses – which included building his own musical devices that incorporated such non-musical-seeming pieces as blenders and typewriters – he’s remarkably catchy, even in his loopy, angular eccentricity. He was considered too eccentric in his heyday to achieve the popularity (or notoriety) of his compatriots, and between 1978 and the 1990 release of this collection, he released only one album, living in relative obscurity.

All that changed when David Byrne took a late 80’s trip to Brazil and picked up one of Zé’s albums on a whim and was struck by the curiously catchy sounds he heard there. He tracked down Tom Zé and reissued cuts from several records as this release (with its ironic subtitle: Massive Hits) on his then-new Luaka Bop label. Since then Zé has found the audience for his work internationally (and has achieved a revival and recognition at home as well) and resumed his recording career, which has continued steadily through his latest release, a 2012 album (Tropicália Lixo Lógico) which has yet to find a domestic distributor.

            And in listening to this wonderful collection – drawn from the early/mid-1970’s and largely from his brilliant (and sadly out of print) 1976 album Estudando o Samba – it’s hard to imagine what was so upsettingly odd about the music. Surely he didn’t adhere as closely to tradition as others, but today, as in 1990, these sound like a slightly bent, personal take on the pop – meaning Brazilian pop, of course – norms. Even the loopy stuff, like the lead track “Mā” and its answer bookending the album, “Nave Maria” with their syncopated, dissonant rhythm guitars churning out an irresistible rhythm, or the short, fragmentary bites of “Um "oh!" e um "ah!"” or “Complexo de Épico” are infectious as all get-out. And for real pop hooks, try “Hein?” (simple, catchy) or “Dói” (with its horn section emerging late to give an extra punch to the samba feel of the piece) for starters and wonder yet again how his work could be neglected as too odd. And when he chooses to bend himself to tradition instead of the other way around, he can come up with a piece as openly lovely as his cover of Jobim’s gorgeous “A Felicidade.” Give it a try and see if you’re not drawn inexorably into Tom Zé’s weird, funny, catchy, moving world. It’s a great place to visit.

            - Patrick Brown