The name Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is bound to elicit a lot of skepticism in 2011. Not just because of the absurdly stupid band name, either (though, honestly, come on). The indie pop darlings hit the ground running with a fully formed, fully self-released self-titled album in 2005 and garnered all kinds of critical acclaim. Then, two years later, they followed up with the flawed (see; misunderstood) Some Loud Thunder, and everyone everywhere screamed sophomore slump. The next four years were quiet—Alec released a jazzy solo album and the rest of the band, I can only assume, sat around waiting for him to come back. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, then, are a band with everything to prove in 2011—but what they prove with their third album, Hysterical, isn't entirely clear.
Hysterical is immediately glossier than its predecessors. Gone is the spit shine, DIY awkwardness of the debut and the unabashedly ugly production of Some Loud Thunder. Opening track ""Same Mistake"" starts with silence then explodes into a flurry of snare hits and glowing, 80s synths, and immediately it's clear that this time around CYHSY are a big band trying to do big things. Lead singer Alec Ounsworth's distinctive wail has all but vanished—where there was passion and recklessness before now there's nothing but cool confidence and a Bejar-aping croon. And maybe that's the most apt comparison; Hysterical feels like the big, handsome older brother to Destroyer's still magnificent Kaputt. Where the latter celebrated all the tackiness of the 80s and casually dropped jazz lines and quips about cocaine, Hysterical is everything else about everyone's least favorite decade. It's big, it's flashy, and it's absolutely awkward.
The record has two real settings, slow and stadium crushing. The ballads are almost entirely throwaway songs—nothing here even comes close to the early morning prettiness of songs like ""Details of the War."" When the songs get big, though, they shoot for the stars. Lead single ""Maniac"" bounces on a wiggling bass-line and sporadic synth fills and flaunts Alec's gifted melody-making—even if the words all bleed together, the hook sticks with you. ""Into Your Alien Arms"" is just as catchy and ends with an explosive jam, really showing off CYHSY's guitar machismo for possibly the first time ever. ""Ketamine and Ecstasy"" is probably the best song here, tied with the snaking and volatile ""Adam's Plane,"" but past those few standouts the rest of the songs all blend together into washes of synth and impenetrable lyrics. After a while, everything starts to sound the same.
The problem here is that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah opened their career with a legendary album full of twists and turns and identity defining idiosyncrasies. Some Loud Thunder may have changed the game up a bit, sidestepping the shaky dance pop synonymous with the name, but it still felt like an album by a band that knew who they were and what they wanted. Hysterical is such a radical departure (from both CYHSY's hipsterisms and Alec's own gothy blues) that it feels forced and frankly unnecessary. There isn't a single song here that comes anywhere near the whiny magic of ""Heavy Metal"" or the jangling throb of ""Satan Said Dance."" It's frustrating, too, since the band certainly still has that songwriting spark—why they'd muck it up by writing songs they were clearly never meant to write is anyone guess. Hysterical is the sound of a gifted band failing to live up to it's own potential. It's not a bad album by any means, but it's also nowhere near the album it should've been. — C-
