Nov. 7, 2005

"Success is so forbidding/but it makes me think I'm winning." -- from "Over and Over Again (Lost and Found)"

In a season that has brought forth spectacularly well-funded and mega-publicized releases by a great many artists from both above and below the mainstream radar, one of the year's great success stories has been the debut album by a little East Coast rock band that decided to make a go of things the old-fashioned way. And by "old fashioned," I mean, of course, incredibly labor intensive and difficult. Fortunately for the members of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the self-release strategy that "was born of having no other option" has launched them to national prominence. And though much of the attention they're getting tends to focus on their relationship (or lack thereof) to the music business proper, it's worth noting that the record they've worked so hard to put out is a stunningly original and deeply pleasing collection of music. Catchy, freaky and oddly welcoming, CYHSY draws on a wealth of bizarre pop influences (Talking Heads and Violent Femmes are obvious points of reference here, but artists such as the Cure, the Birthday Party and the Clean also figure into the band's ebullient goulash) to forge a sound that feels very much in the present tense. Singer/songwriter Alec Ounsworth took a few minutes out of his between-tours downtime to speak to MSN Music about the past and future of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

MSN Music: Things have gone conspicuously well for you guys so far. Have you made records in the past or had other band experiences that weren't so fortunate?

Alec Ounsworth: This is the first band I've been in. I've never endeavored to be in a band before. I've played music since I was a kid. [Music] has always been an obsession of mine. I've been writing songs for 10 years now. It was shaping up that I was beginning to write songs that were more for a band, which is to say: I built a studio -- a very modest studio -- in Philadelphia about a year before the band started. And I started putting ideas together fully fleshed out with bass and synthesizers and guitars and all this other stuff. It was a little limiting just doing it here in my basement. I was satiated to a certain extent, but I decided that needed a group of guys to fill it out, and it might be fun to put it on stage and put it on an album and things like that.

Was the recording process collaborative once you found that group of guys, or were the ideas you generated in your studio pretty much the blueprint for the record?

Right now I'm down in the basement working on some songs that might be on the next album, and it's mainly that. That's the root of it: I sit down and have the ideas for the songs and bring them up to New York. Those guys are very talented and they can execute based on what I have to bring them and what direction I have beyond that. It's somewhat of a combination of ideas, but generally I have everything in my head.

Speaking of the next record, how's it shaping up?

It should be somewhat different. I mean, right now I'm trying to keep it together to figure out how I want it to feel. I have songs that could be on the next two or three albums -- I have a lot of material. I don't necessarily think it'd all fit, so I'm gonna have to do some work to come up with new material between now and the time we want to record. But I think it should be different in the sense that we're gonna be in a different studio, we're gonna have a different engineer, and I mean it's not a conscious decision to make it shape up like a different album, but it turns out that way.

Read more of this exclusive interview on page 2