Interview with CYHSY
"Every album should be an event of sorts to me, and this is a fresh start in my opinion. It feels like starting over…" - Alec talks to Outline about the new CYHSY offering.
A show of hands would prove a positive response if people were asked whether they enjoyed CYHSY’s sophomore album, ‘Some Loud Thunder’ – my own raised aloft. But did it enter the same fiercely competed soundtrack of our lives, the coveted place in our hearts that their eponymous debut did? That’s what their debut did in 2005, and what new record ‘Hysterical’ has gone a long way to getting back this year after the band’s worthwhile hiatus…
Are you on a mental Christmas countdown then Alec? Sort of, but not really; I don’t tend to do that so much, but I did just get back from touring last week and it was a pretty solid block of touring for a while there, so it’s more of like, winding down a little bit, then I’m hoping to get back in to working mode. So for me, it’s more like I’m picking back up, while everybody else is winding down!
As you just said, you’ve done a bit of touring and you describe it on your blog as a small North American tour, but by the sheer scale of the US, that can’t be our idea of small, so what did you take in as part of it?Yeah, I mean that’s true; I think we were in the Midwest and basically it seems that if we hit one part of the United States, it’s relatively small and we just did the Midwest this time, and just before that we went along the east coast, but just between Boston and Philadelphia, so really we’ve been shooting off for not too extensive a tour here and there. But yeah, the Midwest has a lot of long drives – that’s a big part of it, but it was fortunately a good time of the year to tour the Midwest ‘cause it can be brutally cold if you wait too long. It’s been great, I think we’ve really figured out what we need to do; all of this is geared towards how we make this steady and how we make it really work. I would imagine that certainly by the time – and while we were in the Midwest, it seemed to be clicking in such a way that we really knew how to approach things. It’s taken a little while; as you know, we took a little time off, so it’s taken some time to get back into it.
But having that hiatus, and having your own individual adventures, doesn’t it reinvigorate the band?Yeah I think so, I mean, it was something that was necessary and it was also something that people should do. I’d advise people to do it from time to time, you know, to take a little bit of time and then come back because you can’t really fake, or I can’t really fake it. I can’t fake most things, and I can’t fake this at all! You have to be honest with the people who are coming to the shows and who are buying the records and there’s no other way about it. It started to get to be a bit too much of a grind and there are some jobs where you can go through the motions, but this is just not one of them, so if it means that you have to step back a little bit, then you have to do that. We tried to really recapture the spirit of what we had starting off, you know, as difficult as it was for some people…
And the media don’t allow you to just have an innocent hiatus…Exactly! There has to have been some sort of blow up, or someone had to have done something they shouldn’t have, or that sort of thing, but it’s not quite as deep as that. It’s a little more nuanced; just like most things, there are some details that, you know, aren’t really worth going in to, that have to do with any given decision. The final thing is that we just had to, that’s all.
Now I want to talk about the new record; there’s a good live feel to it – that’s down to the recording process, is it?Yeah, I think it had a lot to do with how we wanted to come back into it and as far as I was concerned, I wanted to be sure that everyone was comfortable going forward with Clap Your Hands. I think of it as a record that is… accommodating sounds very dull and not exactly the right word, but I certainly wanted to make sure that if we were going to go about this, we were going to hit hard at the live shows. Basically, the second record was not really geared towards that, so we wanted to turn around and reinvigorate the project in a live setting and have that be noticeable on the record.
I don’t know if I ever really appreciate how much a producer can have an influence on the album – can you enlighten me? How much part do they play, and how much did John Congleton play?How much did John play? It varies from one producer to another, I mean I’d made a record just shortly before with Steve Berlin and Steve certainly had a big hand in every step of the way on that particular record and that’s what I wanted – that’s what I asked him to try to do. For this one, it was a little more of John’s sonic touches and we had worked on these songs for about six months or so, just back and forth, a whole bunch of material and I think John had a lot to do with sorta honing in on how to make this record cohesive in a sonic way. Sooner or later, of course, the goal or the idea is that whoever you’re working with – sometimes I’ve heard of producers who can be somewhat apathetic, and I know producers who have worked on people’s projects and they do a lot of records, but you would hope that you could kinda get their attention. Fortunately, John and I are on a similar level, like we have similar interests and right away he was very invested, and that’s a big deal for me. And invested in such a way that we would perhaps argue our points, which is good! That’s the way it is and for this record everybody was working hard to get to the finish line and John became more or less another band member in that sense.
Talking of the finishing line, the finishing line of the album, ‘Adam’s Plane’ feels like a very conclusive end to the album, it’s a real crescendo. That obviously makes it easy for fans to worry though that you’re putting a full stop on the band’s proceedings…Well you know, you never know; it wasn’t done with that attention, to suggest anything of that sort, but yeah, you never know. I think in a creative field you can never expect anything, I mean you can never force yourself into any given situation – you have to kind of take it as it comes. For example, when I go back to working on songs, I’m not generally sure who, or what particular project these songs are going to go to. I just try to fit what I have in my head on that particular day, and maybe I’ll think ‘this’ll be for Clap Your Hands’ and maybe it won’t, but I can’t sit down and say alright, I’m gonna do a bunch of Clap Your Hands material. I can try, but it usually won’t come off very well, or I’ll make about 10 of the same song, or something like that! I think we’re feeling good about this one though; every album should be an event of sorts to me, and this is a fresh start in my opinion. It feels like starting over…
Many people are asking me for my ‘Ones to Watch’ for 2012, but artists seem to be increasingly scared to be part of those kinds of lists because they’re built with such a level of hype that they worry they’re going to combust, or peak too soon. With so much buzz surrounding you guys at the beginning, how did you ensure a smooth continuation? I mean, it’s something that I never really paid too much attention to. I think it’s fairly arbitrary why and whether people like you, or like what you’re doing at any given moment and if you start to pay too much attention to it, or buy into expectations that other people have, I think you’ll drive yourself crazy, so the best you can do is ignore it, or if you can, escape that realm for a little while and follow that line that you’d been following before anybody took you in, in the first place. It’s something that is a trick, and it’s not just as easy as that, but it is something that you have to work to avoid, basically. I kinda wish that people would listen to records for what they are, rather than in comparison to… I don’t know what, anything really! Just listen to the record and try to displace yourself, or your thinking on where this might have come from, or where it stands in regards to what this person has done before, or what this band have done before. An album is its own thing, you know. But I mean people can only be thankful for people paying any attention at all, so at the end of the day, it’s good, but I’d just say for anyone else, just don’t think about it too much.
You guys have maintained a wonderfully independent approach over in the US, self-releasing and things, but in this country you seem to have a good relationship with V2, who you release through and of course, Bella Union – I imagine that there were criteria you put forward when you were thinking of joining these companies though… Well we had a relationship prior to signing on with them – well Co-op specifically, and that was one of the big reasons, I mean, we had personal relationships with people in different parts of the world who worked with Co-op and that was a big deal. For me, to know everyone personally before we even signed on was huge. Maybe a better offer, an ostensibly better offer from somewhere else would come along, but they had a leg up right away by virtue of the fact that we had that connection there. You need someone who’s as passionate about this stuff as you are.
I don’t know if you hear about the musical tragedy we suffered this year where a lot of the physical stock of our independent record labels was destroyed in riot fires… Yeah, I heard a little bit about that. I didn’t realise that all that stock was based in one location – I though it might have been one label that was interrupted, I guess…
No, it was so many of them, all different types of label, but do you think that incidents like this incite creativity, or should do? I don’t know, if you mean any degree of hardship, or the idea of getting knocked down and getting back up again, I think to a degree yes, but this is a bit more of a depressingly tragic situation! I don’t think any of the bands who sign on should… I don’t know, I kind of see it as a synthesis you know; you just have to keep on keeping on, but then in certain other situations, I do believe in tearing down and working to rebuild yourself and rebuild what you’re doing. But to manufacture that type of situation is something that’s difficult to do, because like you said, with these lists and with any hype surrounding any particular band, a lot of them are desperate to get back to how and why they began in the first place, because if you get too caught up in things, you start to go on cruise control, whether you like it or not, and you start to release material you don’t really believe in. However, I think this is a different situation, but to answer your question in a more general sense, I think it is worth it to put yourself in a bit of a position of having to pull yourself back up. It can demonstrate your strengths and weaknesses much more clearly than just going along and doing what you’re doing. Nevertheless, having been there myself, on both sides, it is easy to focus on things when you don’t have to worry about too much of the external difficulties that come along with what you’re doing. I think it’s a drag, basically, what you’re referring to, the burning of this stock. If they care at all – and there are a lot of bands struggling out there and there’s a lot of fear that music isn’t itself and bands and certain projects are becoming endangered by virtue of some other ways to get at material – I just think that maybe, and I know people say they listen to more music, that’s what they say, that people listen to more music these days than ever before, so if they care – I mean, really care about what they’re listening to, they should kinda stand together and try to maintain a community of arts, like a global community. I think that it in time… I mean, I don’t think it has become quite dire at this point, but it’s getting there and it seems that in time, people will need to recognise that it’s not just something that they desire at any given time, but it’s an absolute necessity, I think, maintaining that sense of artistic freedom. That needs to exist, that’s all.
On a lighter side Alec, you’re coming to the UK in the new year – do you have any feeling towards the UK and its musical relationship to you? Obviously every city’s different, you know, you go to one town then you go to the next. That’s true for the United States as it’s true for the UK, but I like the challenge that I recall feeling, even when we started out, I liked for example, Manchester seemed a good, like my kind of audience, you know, like a good challenging, demanding crowd. I like to have to fight for it a little bit, you know?! Over the history of rock ‘n’ roll, or popular music, whatever you want to call it, there are so many projects that have come out of the UK that people are very well informed and they don’t expect you to just phone it in. You just can’t do it! I prefer that, people wanting you to force yourself in there and be convincing. That’s nice thing, you know, you go to some cities and they’ll just take what you give ‘em – you still want them to do that of course, but in the UK you’re communicating, but they’re also not going to let you off that easily.
What, as an audience, can we bring to the show for you when you come? Just that – bring yourselves, I mean, honestly I think over there it’s just built in that people have, not the expectation factor, but people understand what’s happening. Not that they’ve seen it all before, it’s not that, it’s not cynical or anything like that; I would just like to be honest and I’d expect that from the audience, and I think you get that over there.
Emma Garwood
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah come to the Waterfront on January 31st. For tickets go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk. To read the uncut version of this interview, go to Outlineonline.co.uk
