Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Gig: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah @ HiFi Bar 22/05/06


Richard managaged to score a pair of last minute tickets to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's second ever Australian gig at Melbourne's HiFi Bar this afternoon.

I said yes, yes, yes immediately but two things kept me from jumping for joy.

i) I was dead tired, having stayed up until 1am that morning to try and figure out how to use Adobe Flash.

ii) Ange and James had told me just a month ago that their outing to see CYHSY was quite possibly their worst gig ever.

I rushed home to get some sleep before the show (which of course didn't happen) and then met Richard at the door at quarter to 10.

Richard was a little late so I amused myself by psychopathically calling his mobile and playing spot the CYHSY fans. Given that the HiFi Bar is on Swanston Street, the latter was quite easy: tight fitting striped knit = CYHSY fan, polo shirt tucked into pants ≠ CYHSY fan.

Inside was pretty much as expected. Crammed to the brim with people, smokey and by and large not somewhere you'd want to be when you are tired. The band had already hit the stage and were blaring out one of their new tracks.

When I say blaring, I mean BLARING!!! The mix was awful and only exacerbated by the volume. At times the keyboards were so piercing that I thought someone was stabbing me in the ear with their cutting edge hairstyle. We are talking ringing in the ears that could turn anyone into a post impressionist master. That said, the sound did seem to be geared towards the new material. As soon as they piped up with their dance rock single "Satan Said Dance" the band shone.

Unfortunately, it sputtered out again after that track.

It was the band's first time in Oz so they had resolved to play some of their older stuff (which was a bit of a blessing because their newer material is a little plodding, which possibly explains Ange and James' reaction).

Ounsworth's vocals, which are charmingly esoteric on their recordings, came across a little try-hard in performance, mainly because they had nowhere to go. Bands understandably want to give a little more when they go live but Ounsworth's braying was already a little testing on their albums, live, in trying to up the ante, he pushed it over the edge. The result was a lot of meaningless whooping, cracked notes and megaphones.

Once again, I sound like I am being picky. A lot of the show was fantastic, especially their old stuff. But it was hit and miss.

One of the highlights was a new (newer than than the new album I believe... strike that, I believe it no longer) track which started with Icelandic tinks and ended in a post rock homage to Mogwai, or as Richard suggested, the soundtrack to 28 Weeks Later.

A strange night that would have passed immeasurably more pleasantly were I not falling asleep on my feet.

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1 Comments:

At 2:29 pm, Blogger richardwatts said...

Much more in-depth than my brief rant!

Hmm, word verification for this comment is: rwuajb = equal richard watts you are jb. What the fuck does jb mean?

 

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