Backstage at Clap Your Hands Say Yeah last Tuesday.
I think the most surprising thing about CYHSY’s success, apart from how unlikely it seems that a soft-spoken guy I met at a Need New Body in-store might be on Letterman in less than a year, is the content of the backlash against his band. It’s not a backlash against the band, or frontman Alec Ounsworth, or even indie rock per se, but a critic’s lament against Pitchfork Media’s curatorial capabilities.
It’s a shame too, and this is the conflict of interest part I guess, because it seems pretty amazing that in an epoch of corporate greed, Alec was able to piece together a fungible scenario that allowed him to maintain creative and financial control, negotiate on his own terms and achieve a degree of independence that few artists enjoy. Talking to him you’d never believe that this guy wrote his own ticket, starting out at L’Etage’s ramshackle cabaret, singing forlorn tunes for an indifferent audience. And with a solo record nearly completed, this might just be his creative chrysalis.