Clap Your Hands Say Yeah launches tour

	Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's five members are all CC alums.

Earlier this month Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the mostly Brooklyn-based band whose five musicians are all CC alumni, kicked off their American tour in Providence, RI at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel.

The band deftly blended songs from their self-titled debut and the group's new record "Some Loud Thunder." New tunes like "Yankee Go Home" and "Satan Said Dance" combine darker, almost rageful, elements to the more conventionally melodic engaging older material like "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" and "This Home on Ice," obvious favorites of the crowd in Providence.

Backed by a the band's signature blend of humming keyboards, tight drumming and simple guitar melodies, lead singer Alec Ounsworth's strangely infectious wheedling vocals were, at times, grating, but nonetheless intriguing. Ounsworth's between-song banter, however, was just plain grating.

By now the success story of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah has been embedded into indie rock folklore. It goes a little something like this: five college friends move to New York, form a band, set the city's critical music blogs on fire, and sell 50,000 copies of their self-produced debut record without any help from a major record label.

Thanks to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, it seemed like punk never died, the Nirvana thing never happened, and, mainly due to the power of the Internet and word of mouth, a quality band had "made it" without some corporate giant's helping hand.

Robbie Guertin, Lee and Tyler Sargent, Sean Greenhalgh, and Ounsworth all cut their rock and roll teeth in Conn College's MOBROC (Musicians Organized for Band Rights on Campus).

And before there was Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, there was The Glorious Nosebleed, a Conn band in which Guertin played guitar that was dedicated to cartoonist Edward Gorey. And then there was Mr. Brownstone, a Guns 'N' Roses cover band fronted by Greenhalgh that once played Times Square.

Recalling a conversation I had with Greenhalgh (now CYHSY's drummer) in 2005 after the band had finished a show at South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan the same day he quit his day job to go on tour—his joy was genuine.

"I don't know how, but I found the golden ticket," he said, visibly giddy. And judging by the band's confidence and competence as a live act, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah look and sound as if they've adjusted to their new found success.

CYHSY will continue their American tour through May before heading to the European festival circuit in July. For more information go to www.clapyourhandssayyeah.com.

By M. Matthew Clark