Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - London Koko - 10/2/06
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
It takes a squint, a squeegee of your third eye and the momentary blocking out of that and those around you, but through the quagmire of confusion you should be able to tell that the sound Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! are authoring is one worth sticking it out for. It takes a while to really sit well with those uninitiated with their records, but their charm is that it eventually happens to each and every attendee, that state of mind when any other kind of music would sound completely out of place. What's really special is that this feeling lasts for a few hours afterwards. Bottle it, give it to politicians.
What happens once you're accustomed to their ways of going about things is a temporary residence in a dream like state of mind, everything at its haziest to a point where you could swear they've been blurred out by a smoke machine even though no such piece of kit has been utilised since Battle's cracking opening set. What you presume are words are uttered in a Verlaine-esque warble that's almost completely indecipherable (but, you'd imagine, very poignant) bar the odd instruction to undergo the action demanded by the band's title now and again. Instrument thwacking is abound, but no matter how many people are hitting how may things there's only the one sound you can concentrate on. Until one of them drops out and you subsequently realise exactly what their part in the deal was, it's as if they're all hammering away at one intensely glorious note. Songs carry on in the ears long after they've stopped being played on the stage. Everyone gazes and wonders quite how fulfilling it would be to be part of the making of that sound. Perhaps some of them go and start bands.
The only problem with their disco lullabies is that it doesn't make for the most reactive crowd. Whilst people look on smiling, hugging each other, clapping politely and without pretence, there's enough of an opportunity for a communal love boogie here that it's a wonder more people don't take them up on their offer. Nevertheless the Clappers keep trying, digging out grooves more and more adept at inducing the shuffling of feet, and a few oblige, appearing to be loving every shake of their frame. For the rest, they seem to have won over their minds, but perhaps to an extent where their bodies are numbed.
Your memories of it, rather than being of any particular song or moment bar the instance when the same balloons that frame the stage are emptied on to a now adoring crowd come the finale, will largely be of that mindset you were so masterfully transported to and how happy you were in it. It's something that takes hours to shake itself from your mind, only letting go when it's good and ready, during which time any other music sounds completely out of place, alien, even vulgar. Later in the night, it's reported those Babyshambles made a 'surprise' (i.e. everyone had half an idea anyway) appearance at a subsequent club night. The less greedy among us left before anything quite so brash and boringly of this world as conventional rock and roll could have attempted to wipe the smile from our faces.
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