Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Huge, massive buzz for the most hyped night of the week, with talk of sold-out shows and last-minute scrambles for tickets. It might sound odd, but that's exactly how it went. Then again, there's plenty that's odd about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Odd was Brian Howe's gushing praise on "Pitchfork", which crowned them indie phenomenons and dragged in names like Modest Mouse and Wilco. Odd that they're on Wichita Records, a label that nonetheless put out a record like "Lifted" by Bright Eyes, as well as Bloc Party (who unfortunately seem to be a huge letdown live). In short, it's odd that a nice, catchy record should cause so much fuss over nothing. We know, though, that the truth will out, and we're waiting for them at the finish line. We're curious and open-minded, we swear it hand on heart. Could it really be that all these people filling the Estragon by half past nine are wrong? Well, yes. But let's take things in order.

At a quarter past ten, Dr. Dog from Philadelphia take the stage. Picture a cross between Beatles and Supergrass, dressed like Badly Drawn Boy and dancing like Flea. But the voice is identical to the grating vocals of Clap Your Hands. The drums save the day, round as an egg, but otherwise they come across as fairly hybrid. Still, in playing their musical mash-up they seem to be having fun, and as a result so does the crowd, which is no small feat. They don't take themselves too seriously and create a relaxed, easygoing mood, so even if their music doesn't blow us away, they manage to entertain us (their likeability perhaps explains the striped beanies worn by both Dr. Dog and half the audience).

Forty-five minutes later, the stars arrive. And the question of the night is: is the singer putting us on, or is he for real? We find out he's probably for real, since when he talks he's just as off-key as when he sings. But the voice — by now their trademark, and open to interpretation depending on taste — is nothing compared to the way they play, which simply isn't there. When you start hearing comments like "well, this place has terrible acoustics", it's time to worry. No, it's not the Estragon that has terrible acoustics — it's them, they just can't play!

A jumble of noise, a mess in which only the snare drum, unchanging throughout the whole show, is recognisable. Even nice tracks like "Home On Ice" and "Lost and Found" lose all their freshness and seem to have no melodic line whatsoever. We only recognise "Tidal Wave" thanks to the unlikely inspiration of a harmonica, which makes the melody actually audible.

The plagiarism of the entire back catalogues of Talking Heads and Velvet Underground ("Details Of War" played like a botched cover of "Heroin") is obvious, but the real problem with this show is boredom. How do you manage to make a track like "The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth" boring? Ugly, with half-baked arrangements, banal — any of those criticisms wouldn't be so bad, but boring? That takes real effort. "Clap Your Hands!" is simply unbearable, and it's not enough for the crowd to clap along in response: everything else is missing.

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