Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are excited to share "CYHSY, 2005" from their anticipated new album New Fragility (due February 12, 2021 via CYHSY / Secretly Distribution). Listen to the track HERE.
The driving, tuneful track explores the concept of "home" in whatever form it takes, specifically as a state of mind and in those we hold dear. "CYHSY, 2005" follows the release of double A-side "Hesitating Nation" / "Thousand Oaks" last year, as well as the strikingly intimate "Where They Perform Miracles" shortly thereafter. New Fragility is now available for pre-order, including limited-edition vinyl pressings -- more info can be found HERE.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's Alec Ounsworth will also be live-streaming a solo performance via Bandcamp Live, the platform's new ticketed live concert streaming program, this Friday, January 29, 2021 at 8pm EST. The stripped-down performance will feature many of the songs on New Fragility for the first time in public, plus some full-catalogue classics. Purchase tickets HERE.
Home. It’s a concept that took on a whole new meaning during 2020, and one that Alec Ounsworth has pondered at length. For him, it’s not so much a physical space or location, but a state of mind - and keeping those we cherish close by. Time away from home can disrupt this, but also lend a wider perspective on exactly what it is you’re looking for; what your soul needs. Such thoughts are deconstructed in the new single "CYHSY, 2005."
“Part of being away so often is leaving people behind, and never feeling you’re able to establish conventionally meaningful relationships,” says Ounworth of the song’s inspiration. “You can be searching for stability - being in one place - and discover that that's an illusion.” And so, over swooping, elegant strings and bustling drums, Ounsworth lays bare a soul yearning for meaning, and one that is considerably skeptical (and feels unworthy) of what many consider "good fortune." “Cheap Italian wine / Cheaper life of petty crime”, he sings. “All I really wanted to do was stay home”.
Yet the song, like the album it’s taken from, is shot through with hope. Positivity too; as Ounsworth sagely notes, “Who am I to question fate?” Being away can bring us closer, both to the people we love and the realization that change is required. Such things can seem very distant, but Ounsworth has come to appreciate what such distance can give us. “There I go again setting up the next stage”, he sings. We should be thankful he does.
HEAR "WHERE THEY PERFORM MIRACLES"
HEAR "HESITATING NATION" / "THOUSAND OAKS"
What are we to make of the world? In many ways, the title New Fragility perfectly sums up our collective state of unease and anxiety, but it’s particularly apt for singer-songwriter Alec Ounsworth / Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and the trauma he’s spent the best part of three years processing. “It’s pretty personal,” says Ounsworth. “It’s about what I think we’re all experiencing at the moment, certainly here in the United States anyway - trying to move forward amidst an almost cruel uncertainty.”
Taken from the David Foster Wallace short story "Forever Overheard," from the collection Brief Interviews With Hideous Men – “You have grown into a new fragility,” says the story’s adolescent narrator – the title track documents what happens directly after a long relationship comes to an end, and what’s discovered soon after. “There comes a period of making up for lost time in a changed world,” says Ounsworth, “and now is a time of predictable stupidity.”
New Fragility finds Ounsworth asking the questions that haunt us all. Depression, divorce, getting older, and confronting the past are all raked over, as are the early years of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and the pernicious influence of fame. And with such heartfelt lyrics married to his unique, eclectic music and distinctive voice, it’s another classic entry in the career of one of independent music’s brightest, and most durable, artists.
New Fragility is not without moments of beauty though. "Innocent Weight," the first time Ounsworth has employed a string quartet, is a fragile, plaintive ballad that frames the dissolution of a relationship in heart-breaking terms (“I don’t know what I’ve done wrong”). Ditto the wondrously sad "Mirror Song," which combines piano and toy piano to great effect, and deconstructs the pressure of touring, the perils of self-medication, and questioning one’s motives for pursuing music as a career. “The guilt about having so much opportunity but feeling empty inside is not easy to reconcile,” explains Ounsworth. “I’m mostly over it now.”
Trace the arc of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s evolution and it shows an accomplished musician and composer sounding ever more confident, constantly refining and broadening his sound and indulging an ever wider set of influences. Few have been as consistently brilliant, eclectic, and intimate; fewer still have done so while being defiantly, 100% independent, refusing to sign deals that compromise artistic vision. New Fragility is a continuation of this, yet it also stands apart as one of his strongest collections of songs yet.
Personal yet universal, New Fragility confronts numerous modern ills. "Dee, Forgiven" is an intimate look at what harm anxiety, and the over-prescription of certain medication, has on the vitality of youth. The song contains one of Ounsworth’s strongest vocals yet – a quivering beacon that shifts from a wail to a low grumble in the blink of an eye, a remarkable expressive instrument that sits perfectly amid the understated orchestration.
Together with his keen ear for melody and his unique, eclectic approach to composition – witness the gentle acoustic picking of "Where They Perform Miracles," the spacious strings and woozy synths of "CYHSY, 2005," or the rambling, slowed down bar-room blues of album closer "If I Were More Like Jesus" - New Fragility is the sound of an artist completely at ease in his work, and unafraid to confront the difficult questions that haunt us all.
New Fragility was produced by Alec Ounsworth, with additional production from Will Johnson, recorded by Britton Beisenherz in Austin, TX and mixed by John Agnello in New Jersey, and mastered by Greg Calbi.
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