Classics: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – ‘In This Home On Ice’ (2005)

Photo by PaulTCowan

You could call “In This Home on Ice” a forerunner of the current edition of 1980s revivalism. Its guitar chords melt into the sides of headphones like microwaved gummy bears, the occasional lead bits emerge just long enough to proclaim their love for Johnny Marr and fade back into the mix; the only sign the ’90s happened at all is Alec Ounsworth’s gloriously ragged vocal. But it’s all enough to separate Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and their abandoned potential from pretty much all of a half-decade of ensuing synth-pop. Joke’s on the band, though: the Strokes got to the chord progression first with “Someday.” So maybe this is ’70s revival? It’ll sound great forever. (And probably better on vinyl on June 14, when it gets remastered and reissued. The band’s latest, Hysterical, is due in September.)

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – “In This Home On Ice”: mp3

(Clap Your Hands Say Yeah was released in 2005)