the making of clap your hands say yeah (Self-titled) - featuring alec ounsworth

Intro:
Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah was formed in 2004 by Alec Ounsworth, Lee Sargent, Tyler Sargent, Sean Greenhalgh and Robbie Guertin. Ounsworth had been recording demos as a solo artist and connected with musicians he met while attending Connecticut College. The band moved to Brooklyn while Ounsworth remained in his hometown of Philadelphia. They began playing shows around New York and recording songs for an EP that they could shop around to labels. As they continued to work on new songs, the EP evolved into a full-length album. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Self-Titled) was eventually released in 2005. 

In this episode, for the 20th anniversary, Alec Ounsworth reflects on how the album came together. This is the making of Clap Your Hand Say Yeah (Self-Titled). 

Alec Ounsworth:  This is Alec from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and I'm talking about the first Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, album, which is also called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (laughs). I would say that that album, I thought it was decent. I thought it was a good start. I was surprised that people liked it. I wasn't gonna release it actually, I thought at the time that you were supposed to be like a hundred percent satisfied with what you did. I didn't realize that you could be like 70 to 80% or whatever, you know, which I essentially was, but also I was too close to it to have like a proper understanding of what happened. I think now I appreciate it more than I did then. But my mom was the one who said, “Just put it out into the world and see what happens. You've been doing all this work on it.” So she's responsible for that.

So I guess it would've been about 2002, 2003, I was playing smaller shows in Philadelphia, just solo acoustic shows and, you know, I had been making a little progress doing that, but I thought a band might be a little bit better entry into the whole industry. Like something a little bit bigger seemed necessary to me. So I started writing songs with a little Roland drum machine, like an old 1980s Roland drum machine and bass synthesizer, like I was using my (Yamaha) DX7 quite a bit for a lot of these demos. Yeah, I wrote a bunch and I had a CD or CDs of demos that I was like passing around to friends and things like this. And I ended up doing a program in Massachusetts for urban planning. And I think one of the twins was living up there who was in the band. Early on, he played guitar and I met him for a drink at some point and I gave him one of my CDs too. And he said he and his brother were moving down to New York and we knew somebody else, Sean, who lived in New York to play the drums. He really liked what I had. So pretty quickly, I think within a week of practice, we tried to play a show with someone and, you know, the songs, “Over and Over Again” were at that show and like probably “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood” was probably at that show, “Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away,” there were a bunch of songs that were already, you know, pretty ready to go. So the intention was to make another like EP to shop around. So initially the idea was just to do that to get the attention of record labels. But yeah, so it went from demos in my basement, which were fairly complete to recruiting some good musicians that I knew from college who lived in New York. And then I still lived in Philadelphia, so I would go back and forth and work with them. I didn't think about the New York scene at all. Like, not even remotely. I had heard of some of the bands that were around, but I had no intention of like ingratiating myself at all. You know, I had respect for them, but I didn't think that I was a part of any given scene. Since then, people have been doing a lot more like solo projects. I think Mac DeMarco does a lot of stuff on his own. There's this other guy, I've never heard anybody pronounce his name, but the M-K-G-E-E, Mk.gee, I guess maybe that's it. It sounds to me like he does a lot of stuff on his own, so it seems like that's a little bit more of a thing now than it used to be. So now my intention was to assemble people cause that's kind of what you did.

So, if I recall correctly, so it was me, Sean (Greenhalgh), Lee (Sargent) and Tyler (Sargent), they knew of a studio in Providence called Machines with Magnets, and they recommended that studio based on, you know, price and, and things like this. So the idea was to record, yeah, four or five songs at that studio. And I think what it was was, we recorded “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood,” “In This Home on Ice,” “Over and Over Again,” and oh, maybe “Details of the War.” Maybe we did five, I can't remember, but those four and maybe one more. And yeah, the idea was to get like a proper sounding CD to send to all the record labels. I do remember that session very well. Sean, who's a fantastic drummer, I think, even though he was not a trained drummer, and at the time he was more of a guitarist and songwriter, he was just transitioning to drums. So we did everything live in the studio, and the first song was “In This Home on Ice,” which is probably, in retrospect, probably like one of the harder ones to take on because they're, you know, it's not complicated structurally necessarily, but there are several things that happen that he has to be aware of for a live recording, I think we did it 20 to 30 times live. We just played it over and over again. Sean would make little mistakes. Just little mistakes, but it had to be perfect all the way through, we were doing everything live and we nearly gave up on that first song. We nearly were like, “God, maybe we come back, or we don't, we just can't do this, or it’s, you know,” but he got it eventually. And yeah and so we made that EP, started shopping things around, kept playing shows in New York, and then we went to Red Hook, Brooklyn to mix the songs that we had. And his name was Adam Lasus. He had a studio, Fireproof Recording, and I think he was kind of encouraging a longer album. He really liked what he heard, and I had already been introducing more and more songs, so we were already testing these live and we figured, “Okay, you know, let's throw in this, this song like, “Is This Love?” or “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth”, we just kind of like, you know, added some things on. And then when it turned out that we had, I don't remember how many, you know, proper songs there were, but I decided to add some instrumental interludes, “Sunshine and Clouds (And Everything Proud),” was one and I just kind of like came up with that in the studio to sort of, I liked, a lot of Tom Waits albums and Pet Sounds, we were all kind of enamored with things like this and like, and Brian Eno's Another Green World and, you know, you can kind of fill in the gaps with that sort of thing. I guess just like putting little bits and pieces on, playing shows, it was probably over the course of a year cause we were only able to really record when he was available. You know, we weren't like a big name project or anything like this, so he was doing other things, so I would just wait. And then I'd get there at the studio before he opened, like, you know, getting ready to, to do things. It was pretty magical to me to be in a studio at all. Yeah and I would just like add bits and pieces, add backup vocals to songs that I thought were kind of lacking to me to give it a little bit of an increase in interest. You know, I was really enamored with, well, Brian Eno all the time. He was a huge influence for me. But albums like, Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strat). And there's a song on Taking Tiger Mountain where he uses a typewriter for percussion in the background and they're all sorts of interesting sounds on Here Come the Warm Jets. And for me, I would be like, “Well if you have something that you just find that might be an interesting sound, bring it to the, bring it to rehearsal and we'll see how we can kind of work it in.” So I would try to do that here and there on that album. I think I realized the constraints of recording to a degree and also acceptance of limitations is very important for me. Even at the time, I liked the idea of using whatever was in that studio, in that environment. I didn't like bringing my own guitars or whatever, like I just wanted to use what they had.

“Clap Your Hands!” 

So the first song, “Clap Your Hands!,” I think that was one of the songs that I came up with at the very end. And in retrospect, this is pretty hilarious cause I was like, “You know what we really need? I need to bang on that door, that big wood door you have there for percussion.” Like (sings) “clap your hands, like boom, boom.” You know, stuff like that. Like silly little things like that. He had a big organ, so I think I was probably just tinkering on the organ and I just kind of came up with that while I was just sitting around, like waiting for other things to happen. So it all kind of came in a rush and probably mostly influenced by nineties hip hop, believe it or not, like Gang Starr and like, Black Sheep, like the very beginning they have this sort of like introduction song, but also Tom Waits on the album, Black Rider has something that's like a carnival barker type of thing. And I probably just like pulled that aesthetic a little bit, just as like a little, little teaser, I guess. I like that on albums sometimes.

This is one time, I guess the guys did sing kind of backup. There's this line where I go, “As time alone, stand still for some, stuffed sailor up with eyeball sun,” and I try to make it sound like people are on the waves and they're in the middle of like a vast ocean. But I had all the guys around a microphone going, “whooaaa” (laughs). Like they were like, they were on a ship that was, you know, bound to sink (laughs). So anyway, I just had fun with that first one, you know, and for me, the real kick of course is, “Cool Goddess” comes out of that. I was very measured when it came to what songs followed what songs. So having “Cool Goddess” kind of rush right out of that had a better impact to me than “Cool Goddess” starting the album. So that was probably the initial idea was, (sings guitar riff) “dun dun dun dun.” You know, but I thought, “Let's add this.” And just, you know, all of that stuff was kind of measured. They were all kind of like carefully orchestrated.

“Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away” 

I remember that pretty well. I was really sick. I often got like these flus that were pretty bad. And I remember I was at my mom's house and she had a piano, and I think, I don't know if I wrote several songs at the time, but I was like, in this foggy state, and I was just like, (sings piano part) “dun, dun, dun dun.” And uh, I think I wrote it right there, but I mean, honestly, it's just like, it's just D to G the whole time. A lot of the songs kind of get their value from just being so simplistic in my opinion. But that one, I just wrote with the melody being there for “Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away,” but the lyrics not yet, which is often how I write. But you know, the lyrics, especially the title, the title came from, you know, those magnets that you put words together, or put sentences together, phrases. Magnetic Poetry, yeah that's it. I think it was either, it might've been at my dad's house or my mom, I can't remember. But I was looking at these and I put all that together, having to do with an ex and I thought, “That's an interesting phrase, I'll use that.” So it was from a magnet thing, you know. If I had an iPhone, then I probably would've taken a picture, but I didn't (laughs). You're gonna have to believe me.

Yeah, and the backup vocals, (sings) “I found a new face, fa-ce,” you know, all of this stuff. I was just like, there are these little like, you know, like Easter eggs. I think to me, when I was a kid, I used to listen to a lot of like, oldies, like fifties and sixties, and I always used to sing the backup vocals. That was just interesting to me. But I thought for every song there was like a little, a little treat in there, you know, every like big single like, there was a subtle shift or like an introduction of a new color or something like that, that kind of made it more worthwhile. David Bowie did this really well. I thought like a lot of his backing vocals, a lot of little elements that just kinda like popped in that, you know, you didn't expect but worked, you know? So I tried to add these little things, like even the (sings) “ding ding, ding ding” on “Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away” against the other piano. I think I took that from, like, borrowed whatever. But that was inspired by I think it's “Seven Chinese Brothers,” R.E.M.’'s. song, where they just have this hanging (sings) “ding ding ding” to like introduce Michael Stipe's vocal. So stuff like that, you know, I just kinda like plopped in a little bit. It wasn't stealing (laughs). 

That was me trying to consider my electric guitar percussive in the way David Byrne kind of did it and, and that sort of thing, but even more so. Like for me, I remember this cause I did it at Machines with Magnets. And I was like, “Just let me do this several times in the studio. I'm just gonna like, kind of go crazy and just like do this kinda weird percussion.” And I think I did two guitars, one over the other. And every so often there was a little stab, like, you know, and then when it came to the chorus, “Let the cool goddess rust away,” it started kind of descending. But that was all just like this weird improvised thing. I tried to have a little manic energy on that to accompany. And another thing that I wanted to do for that was sink the drums. Like, it's a lot of toms, but the kick is present. But I wanted the toms, I wanted everything to be a little lower. Like, another inspiration I think was like, early Rolling Stones recordings. And what I liked about that was that the drums were present, but they weren't like a featured element. And I was like, “I want the tambourine above,” things like this that made it a little bit like disjointed that people wouldn't expect. So I was pretty, yeah, particular about that. Sean hits hard, you know, and he hits really hard. And if it would've been a totally different song, if we brought it up to, you know, a level that's a little more popular these days, I guess. I always had a problem, I worked with a lot of engineers and they always wanted to make the drums a little bit more of a featured element than I was ever comfortable with. But yeah, that was one thing, you know, nobody was telling me what to do or giving me solid advice exactly. Back then it was just kind of like, “You're on your own,” which is cool.

“Over and Over Again” 

Sean was trying to essentially copy the drum machine for a lot of this and he just, you know, obviously is much better than a drum machine. So he added his little touches, which were great, and I thought, you know, really cool. And he also sped up, like “Over and Over Again.” The original demo might have been like, I don't know, like 110 BPM, something like this, which is a little slow. Sean sped it up to probably around, I guess around 125 or something like this, and I thought, “Whoa, that's fast.” But now I'm, now I listen back and I'm like, “Oh, he was right.”

Yeah “Over and Over Again,” I wrote, that was a complete song that I brought to them. One thing that I do remember was I played that bassline, which I was pretty proud of. I liked that bassline and all the synths, I liked Magnetic Fields a lot of the time, and I liked the counter melodies that they created with synths. And I thought it really kind of like, things were kind of like crossing over one another. So the vocal has its own melody and then there's one synth and then there's another one. So I just kind of added all this stuff. But one thing that I also had on the original demo, which we tried to do in the studio, I had two bases going at the same time, which is weird and probably would've gotten muddy if we really did it, but I don't remember what the other one was playing. And that lead bassline is just so like, kind of memorable that the other one was a little bit excessive. But yeah, I just remember doing this, I don't know, it might've been 2002. It was pretty early, and that was one of the songs that just, I feel like for every record, there's a song that sort of like sets the stage for what else is to be on that record. So that was a song, the first indication of where I wanted this type of project to go. For me, I had it in my head, you know, two big heroes of mine were like Brian Eno on one side, essentially, and like Bob Dylan on another. So I wanted it to be like experimental and like touch on synthesizers, but also to have, like a true songwriting feel to it. So that was the first where I felt like I joined them successfully, you know? So “Over and Over Again,” it was cool. It was, it's a simple song, but it took me a while to get there. For me, the idea is to make the song should be able to stand up in many different ways. When I was playing these songs, I was probably playing these songs at the shows in Philadelphia on acoustic guitar, like by myself. And I had to make them work there and to be able to present them in band form was just kinda like icing on the cake, you know, a little bit.

Well, it's funny, like I studied piano and then guitar and I never thought I could sing or I never was comfortable singing. I never tried because I was like, I guess shy about it or something. And then I got into some program in college where I was like playing in bands. Thought of myself as the guitarist or like keyboardist or whatever. I remember rehearsing with a guy who played the drums and he was really like, kind of punk rock. He was kind of an asshole. He liked me or we respected each other anyway. And I thought I'd sing some like, Wire songs or like Patti Smith, Velvet Underground, people who I appreciated a lot of the time. And then he gave me the confidence, cause he said that it wasn't bad, you know, so I was like, “Oh, that's enough for me.” But I think that Colin Newman from Wire was a big influence for me, and I realized that I kind of like, was in a similar range. I liked how he wrote his lyrics too. It was like snapshots of, rather than like, than a narrative structure or something like this. It was just like snapshots of images. But it also had a certain import, which I thought was kind of interesting. But the way he sang, like, especially on like Pink Flag and maybe Chairs Missing. Was really influential to me and people like that, and like Tom Verlaine and, but “Over and Over Again,” I tried to pull it back. I mean, it was song by song, but yeah, I'd never really noticed how people couldn't really understand my lyrics. Like, it was a surprise to me when people are like, “Oh, you sing, (sings slurred ‘blah blah blah’”, you know, and I'm like, “Well, there are lyrics there,” which I actually work pretty hard on. But yeah, no, I'm okay with that. I don't care if they just like the melody and that's what kind of keeps people entertained, that's fine too. And then if they want to dig deeper, I'm not ashamed by the lyrics. So, I mean, that's what I was getting from everywhere. Like when I was playing my solo shows, when I was playing live shows with the band. It was, that was the focal point. And that's essentially what, I wouldn't say the thing that separates the band from others at the time, but it was like, it was like maybe the most obvious kind of like aspect of this project that like would stand out to people, you know? And, you know, I get it. I have a, I had a freaky voice, but, you know, I was hitting the notes (laughs).

I mean, I remember David Bowie coming. I mean, I was very nervous and it probably was a pretty terrible show. I mean, I think at the time it was really quite a mess, live. So I think Bowie probably just, I don't know, I guess he liked the album. I was flattered, I didn't meet him. You know, some other people like David Byrne, he came to a couple shows and I did meet him. He's super nice and like a lot of, I've been lucky enough to meet several of my heroes, but I didn't meet David Bowie, maybe he didn't like what he heard. I don't know (laughs). It would be tough if it weren't like a pretty direct tribute to him, I guess. So I think it's kind of cool, like, but I didn't know where he was as I recall. I didn’t know where he was sitting or anything like this. So it wasn't like, “You look like David, you look like David Bowie. You over there with the hat” (laughs). 

“Sunshine and Clouds (And Everything Proud)”

Yeah, I used a toy piano on “Sunshine and Clouds (And Everything Proud),” and that was in the studio that probably came together. I don't know, it probably took about an hour to put that together in total. And it's as simple as it gets, you know, it's just like sort of a walkup song and really like, the intention was absolutely just to lead to “Details of the War.” You know, that was it. Just land (sings)” ding, ding, boom, bloody sheets,” you know? So for me it was just like, “How do we break this in such a way that it's not ‘Details of the War’ directly after ‘Over and Over Again,’ but it can be a little bit of a playful feeling before that?” So these interludes made sense to me at the time and, and still do to a degree.

“Details of the War” 

The first line for “Details,” if I do say something myself is pretty good. “Bloody sheets tenderly, she moves me, an opera star dying hard for love to me.” Like the, almost like maudlin or like completely melodramatic aspects of like young romance. “Bloody sheets” being like, I think, I was trying to refer to her, her having her period, that sort of thing. Like pretty, pretty like useful imagery, I would say. You know, “opera star” was obviously like, was intentionally, like over the top, you know? But yeah. Yeah I like that one, and especially at the end because it gets to my whole, like, general antagonism I guess. And the line, “You will pay for your excessive charm,” I was pretty happy with that too. You know, that one again, like, I feel like I was in a big Magnetic Fields phase and, you know, a lot of this album was inspired by coming out of a relationship in my early twenties. So, you know, all the fireworks going off in my head as a result. At the time everybody was like, “Oh, was that like a protest thing or something?” Like, “no, not at all.” I mean, it's “the war,” being a relationship, you know, essentially, you know, which I think, upon further review of the lyrics complete, people would get.

“Details of the War” was one that I had, I don't know what it's called, but you have this like a big gourd with beads on it. I had these like weird percussive instruments in my basement. I didn't have a drum set, I just had a drum machine and a bunch of weird percussion. So for “Details,” I was just like, you know, playing that song and I wrote it, more or less as it is on the album with a call and response for the vocals. And like I was enamored by songs that kind of like just built on themselves as it went on. So the first two verses led to the third, which was extended, and it went back and forth from G to F. It's like a, it's a pretty easy trick, but super effective. And then the vocal just picks up to “be careful with the details of the war.” But yeah, I liked the whole build.

I was pretty happy with the sort of build quality to “Details” and building into “Yellow Country Teeth” was important to me too. So the idea of that, like, that tail at the end of like, and then coming into “Yellow Country Teeth” was a cool effect.

“The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth” 

Yeah, it's a big song and it sits well where it is. You know, to be honest, I didn't really think very much of it (laughs), when we recorded it, it was not at all my favorite, but I get why people respond to it. I think a lot of it has to do with Sean's propulsive drumming, you know, and his little hi-hat hits. It moves in a pretty helpful way. And probably the New Order, like the bass stuff not starting on the root, was a pretty important thing to me. And not just hanging around the kick either. Less of a root against the kick and more of a counter melody. And Tyler was a great bassist, and so he just kinda like moved wherever he wanted to. It wasn't sort of like a John Entwistle type of thing where it's just like, you know, way out. But everybody was encouraged to kind of like, explore and not play in a, like a regular fashion if they could help it.

Songs like “Yellow Country Teeth,” it was pretty intentional to try to crack my vocals at those specific spots and as opposed to, let's say, “Upon this Tidal Wave of Young Blood” where it was pretty intentional to kind of smooth it out a little bit. I didn't know much of like, Neutral Milk Hotel at the time. Like basically the little trick of (signs) “I never plan to,” I go, you know, I get why that's like, people would latch onto that a little bit. I think Jeff Mangum does similar little things. Like he doesn't consider them tricks. I mean, neither do I, but it's like these little effects that kind of like draw people to the song. And the more I listened to Neutral Milk Hotel, who I love, the more I realized that Jeff had these little, like bits in there that just kinda like pushed the song forward and made them a little bit more accessible as a result. And I know for me as with him, like, there's a guy named Chris Knox and he had a band called the Tall Dwarfs among others. And like he did things like, what was the song that I used to cover it? It was a song about the onset of maturity or something like this, I can't remember exactly, but his phrasing was just so interesting to me, and that's kind of all I was trying to do, just like let it ramp up vocally and let the phrasing kind of like carry the song in certain spots. 

Yeah, this one, literally it was just and I think it might have been a practice where we just kind of started doing this and probably did it for like three minutes or something, or five minutes. And I had a tape recorder. I like recorded all the practices, which is weird. But I recorded all the practices and we didn't think very much of it. We were just like, “Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, whatever.” And then I came back and I have (laughs), I have a tape recording of me recording the lyrics over the tape that I recorded in practice, like trying to figure out how to do it. I think they all came pretty quickly at the time. I think that was written in a night, you know, and like a lot of the songs was essentially like a loop, you know, more or less, the vocals kind of like signified where it would ramp up, you know, (sings) “once the dog,” but like the band is doing the same thing, you know, it's just sort of the vocals are… And I think lyrically it was good. I was almost under duress writing the lyrics because it was maybe the last song that was put together and yeah, it was just kind of like messing around. It just happened pretty quickly, that one, and almost like, just tacked on as an afterthought.

For “Yellow Country Teeth,” the subject matter came more from like, I went to school in Connecticut, college I went to Connecticut College. So a lot of people were moving to New York, trying to, you know, advance themselves and their careers and I think, I knew people who were in the arts who were like trying to be involved in, in theater and, and other things. And I knew a lot of artists and musicians there anyway in the same boat from other colleges. And, you know, the quality of like, “this city, like chews you up and spits you out,” you know, type of thing. Like people coming with big intentions and big ideas. And already at the time I was starting to see things start to fray a little bit. And so that was more or less the idea where people are coming from places like West Virginia, you know, having grown up and trying to take on the big city and having, I don't know, suffering from a little bit of a naive and potentially narcissistic miscalculation of what that might mean. People go in with the right intentions, but also the wrong intentions. To me, I was a little, was unnerved by people who desired to be noticed, which is kind of funny, being in my position and everything, or getting up on stage all the time. I do like communicating to an audience directly, but it was never my intention. Like to me, the Beatles had it made and just like making albums in the studio and not really going out there too much. And I thought the same of Brian Eno. Like, anyway, so for me, I was very suspicious of people who just wanted to go to like, make a name for themselves regardless of what kind of art they were creating. You know what I mean? So it was a little bit of like a, it wasn't an attack, it was just an observation, that song.

It wasn't pure pessimism and it never really is like, I never have gotten in the direction of like Ian Curtis or something like this, where it's like, you know, danceable, but if you like, you know, you really dig into the lyrics, you're not wanting to dance that much (laughs). So this is, yeah, it was a little bit different. It was a little bit more of a, and kind of a weird song when you think about it because I think I had one person in mind specifically, and it kind of follows this person's like, it's just a glimpse into this person's New York City attempt. So, and that, the one thing I'm a little bit not bothered by, but I, I think that G to F like break in the middle of the song, still when I play it now, I'm just like, “What is this doing here?” (laughs). I mean, I think the audience kind of appreciates it, but I'm like, “I don't know why this is here.” So it was one of those where I look back and I'm like, “Okay, it kind of works, but not really.” I would say it staying at, at something like five and a half minutes was fairly intentional. It was just like no thought of radio play or anything like this. It was just like, “We're just gonna make a song.” I mean, to be honest, I was surprised that anybody wanted to listen to this at all. Like, I just didn't expect myself to produce work that people, you know, in a popular way wanted to hear. But yeah, I don't know. My friends told me, when I was a little bit, I don't know if I was embarrassed by it, but some of my, like snob music, snob friends said, it sounds a little bit like XTC. And I was like, “Okay, that's more validating than what I had thought.”

“Is This Love?” 

I wrote a lot of these songs when I was like, like the initial version when I was like 18 or 19 or something. And then I tried it and to be honest, like back then, I think I still have recordings. And so I had the structure of a song like, “Is This Love?,” but the melody was just like, I don't know who I was trying to sound like at the time. I think like, probably Robert Smith and Ian Curtis were like big, yeah, the darker stuff or whatever. And then I remember I was practicing with the band, that song, and I was struggling with the approach to the melody, and it's sort of like a lot of the songs where I was just like, “You know what? I'm just gonna, I'm gonna like scrap the whole thing and just try something else that seems a little bit more compelling.” And I really, I just kinda like, I kinda let go on that one to get, (sings) “So much different to me and I'm oh,” and it was more of like a release type of thing to do that. I was like, “I'll explore a vocal melody that kind of like arcs up at the beginning and pushes my voice more.” Rather than what I was doing before, which was probably like, not even the same lyrics, but like something like, you know, whatever, something kind of flat.

Oh man, that song I love. And I think at the time I didn't appreciate the song as much as I do now because a lot of like, I mean, yeah, again, I have these old cassette tapes where I'm like barking orders and shit in the studio, and I think Sean, where Sean comes in and lands on the drums. I don't know if that was like a joint effort, but I will say this about Sean's drumming on that. Coming to the toms for the chorus, oof. That is so cool to me. Like I love that part where it just like sucks out and it reveals the next, the second half of the song, you know, enables you to come out of it and like start over again, you know? Anyway, but I still thought it was pretty incomplete, which is why I added all of those weaving backup vocals. And because we didn't have a lot of studio time consistently, I would just listen to everything that was recorded like a billion times and just pick it apart and need to add X, Y, and Z before I go back. So that was one of the things that I thought the only way this song's gonna stand up is if I add a bunch of backup vocals to this. In retrospect, it was pretty good anyway, but it's kind of cool with all of that. I was really interested in that probably from David Bowie recordings like Low and Heroes and other ones. I like his use of backup vocals, it's kind of unconventional. So I really liked hard pans to the left or the right. So everything is a little bit old timey in that regard. But I think I did four backing vocals in like kind of weaving together in that. So, and just the consistent, “Is this love, is this love,” again, the like, repetitive thing. I like how that comes off because I worked my ass off to get these songs together, but it's still sounds a little bit like, like a little ragtag and sloppy and I like that aspect of it.

That has to do also with like all of the, the scary aspects of love. Like you're in love with someone, but it's really kind of a confused mess, you know, like, “You're so much different than me and I'm my only enemy. Pain is all that I can see.” Which I was probably accused of, and I have been, which is maybe fair, I don't know (laughs). But especially in the early twenties, it was probably like, yeah, that's that's fair. So it has to do with like, you're in love, but you're having trouble understanding how to get along or what to do with that, let's put it that way. But it's still love. Whether you like it or not.

Yeah, I'm an album listener, so everything has to kinda like, be together. It can't just be singles for me. You know, the only mistake, and I've been saying this on this tour, or one of the mistakes was, I got a little confused when it came to this, “Is This Love” part and it's pretty obvious cause like a song that's in the key of A, coming out of the song in the key of C, just like rising from a tailing synth line or just a synth chord. It was a little, a little ridiculous (laughs). It doesn't make much sense at all. So there I was just like,, I think I was a little confused. It probably would've worked better if the (sings guitar riff) that just started the song rather than some fade in, but whatever.

“Heavy Metal” 

So is “Heavy Metal,” the beginning of side two? I keep saying that “Is This Love?” was the beginning. I can't remember. Is “Heavy Metal” the first track on side two or “Is This Love?”? Dammit. I keep saying the wrong thing when in the live shows then (laughs). It's all right. That makes more sense actually because to have that fade out of “Yellow Country Teeth,” but to be beginning side two really doesn't make any sense. So yeah, “Heavy Metal” beginning side two…

Another one on a drum machine in my basement and it was, there was a bit of a, like a disco beat it was in, you know, (sings beat), whatever. And then we recorded it with Keith at Machines with Magnets. We released that original recording on the new release of the 20 year anniversary album. So on a flexi disc, you can hear the original “Heavy Metal” recording as it was done in the studio in Providence. But for whatever reason, I listened to it and it's good, it's really good. For whatever reason, I thought it didn't work, so we tore it down and redid it. And I don't know which one I like more, but I think in regards to how it sits on the album, the one that's on the album makes more sense. So this version when the bass, which is pretty distorted and the drums kick in, it's supposed to really drive, which I think it does. And it really pushes, like my guitar starts the song, and honestly, it's like fairly flimsy, which is somewhat by design, similar to “Is This Love?” It's like (sings guitar riff) and like “Heavy Metals” like (sings guitar riff), but it's kind of when the band kicks in, it really kind of takes shape, of course.

When I moved back to Philadelphia from New York when I was like 21 or 22, and I started really working on all these songs and playing live shows, I realized how much I could exploit the higher register of my voice, which was kind of like sort of news to me. I would play these shows out and I would think, “Oh wow, they really like, they like it when I kind of like hit these higher notes and crack my vocals and stuff like this.” So similar to “Is This Love?,” I mean the vocal, like the melody was similar for the original like demo, “the secrets of all age.” Yeah, like “Is This Love?”, “you so much different than me and I,” sing up. I did a lot of that like running up and coming down and similar to “Is This Love?” as well, I'm pretty sure Sean kind of comes to the toms on this, on the chorus. It has a nice driving propulsion that even is able to ramp up when it comes to the chorus. But it was one of these songs where it's like, yeah, like “Over and Over Again,” serve a little bit of a precedent for everything else.

The harmonica. I add that, but I don't do it anymore live because harmonicas sound pretty abrasive and tinny live. But that was like my little, “Like my hero, Bob Dylan, I too play the harmonica type of thing” (laughs). Similar to “Details.” I prefer “Details,” though. “Details of the War,” with the one harmonica blow. That's pretty cool. This is just a line that I had, which the guitar followed, you know, eventually, I don't know. It works, but it's not entirely necessary. But yeah, I don't know. It's like a really, it's a really good song. Like lyrically, I would say it's good. I don't think it's the best one on the album, if I'm being honest. I think I wrote those lyrics when I was like, probably like 20, you know, and I don't think I did much in the way of changing them or the melody. “The secrets of old age, they tell us we should really stop.” Like people having conflicting opinions of what constitutes a healthy relationship. You know, pretty much, I've gone through that a lot over the years.

I really like the end. I like how the, everything kind of sucks out and hangs a bit. That's really effective live. That one's really easy to play live for that reason. It's really like, it really kicks and I often close shows with that one. And it's a pretty powerful one.

“Blue Turning Gray” 

Oh yeah, this is Tyler's. So Tyler wrote this one, and basically I was looking for something else like an instrumental to bridge the gap between these sections that I had in my head for the album. And Tyler gave me like a CD of his demos or whatever, his recordings. I was like, “I like this one.” And I was like, “Maybe we just plop this in before ‘Home on Ice.’ It's got a similar kind of vibe to it.” And I even suggested the title. This is how much of a kind of a, how kind of ridiculous, like a little bit controlling, I guess I was. “Blue Turning Gray” was the name of my jazz teacher, Tonino Montella's band in Philadelphia, that they used to play the Four Seasons and they were called Blue Turning Gray. And I was like, this kind of feels like that. So we put that on and it's kind of cool. It does its job. Like something needs to come down after “Heavy Metal.”

And that sort of like gets to “Home on Ice.” To me it's cool. Like, again, similar to “Sunshine and Clouds,” it's meant to just like set up the next one. 

“In This Home on Ice” 

So “In This Home on Ice,” as I mentioned, was a song that we tried first at the studio in Providence and since we were recording everything live, and I think we tried that one like 30 times on the first day. We nearly gave up, it was a bit of an existential (laughs), existential threat to the whole project, was was that particular song. Because we're like, “I guess we just can't do this. Like, we just don't know how to make albums.” You know, to Sean's credit, I mean, it is one of those songs as I mentioned, like there is a bridge, it does have more sections. There is a build to the end, so it's a little bit harder to put your finger on than like, “Over and Over Again” or “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood,” where he was essentially just like doing the drum machine. But when we finished this one, this was my favorite of all of them.

My idea for this when we played it was to make it, you know, My Bloody Valentine was kind of, I wanted like all things working at once. This is why the double vocals, this is why there's a Juno synth and then I put an organ as well, like underneath it. So the organ is just like, (sings riff) “do, do, do, do.” But it's like it's supposed to all blend together, the guitar line and the acoustic guitar. Yeah, it's all supposed to just kinda like morph together somehow. I like that one. We play it a little different live. It's harder to make that one work live, but for the album, yeah, I like it and it's a little bit strange cause. Sean's kinda like on the ride for a lot of it. It's pretty crashy, like even through the verses, but I think it's really cool. Lyrically, it's good. I like the end. “Let's just take it slow in this home on ice.” I like the first line, “Blue, you radiant blue, I don't know how you can stand next to me. You, you talk like a noose and only confuse my perplexity.” I think those are pretty good lyrics. You know, a bit dark. “You talk like a noose.” I was like, you know, that's a little tough, but still works. Not too bad. Yeah and “Let's just take it slow in this home on ice.” I like the title. Yeah I mean, I'm trying to think. I don't know if I've heard that recording for several years, but I remember how everyone is, was done and, yeah, it's cool. It's a good song. I do recall, I took, it's kind of a funny little move to stop the double on the last verse and I just have a single vocal, which is, honestly, I don't know if I've really heard that in any other songs, but I was just like, “I'm gonna cut the double now.” And now I'm just like, I don't know what prompted that, but it kind of works, you know? It's like, it kind of works. Yeah it's bizarre, but it does work. I've doubled vocals a lot since, like on The Tourist, I doubled them a lot. It's like, it's an effect that I've, I borrow, I guess a bit from like John Cale and Brian Eno and people like this, who I really admire. Like they did a lot of doubling. And it gives it a little bit of like a, I try not to do like the Gary Nuwman, like strict doubling, like where it's like he's exactly on top of himself. It's like a more looser type of thing. So, you know, it's, there's something magical about that one to me.

When we started getting a lot of attention, I was so like, removed from this sort of thing that, I thought it was really bizarre. I mean, like to me, I knew a lot of friends who I respected in Philadelphia who I thought did good work and nobody cared about them. So I was like pretty humble about everything and almost like defensive or regards like, “Hey, hey, you shouldn't be listening to me. Check this guy out.” You know, that sort of thing. I was like, I didn't really understand it. The pitchfork thing was a little bit, maybe they did write about this, I didn't know if they wrote about the EP or just that song, I don't remember. I did read that review of the first album and I thought, “Well, I'm happy that you liked it, but I have no idea what you're talking about” (laughs). You know, it's like, these are a lot of interesting guesses. But yeah, that's the way it is. Like, if I ever read reviews after that and they were negative or positive, I'm really, as you can probably tell from this interview, like, I'm pretty invested in music. Like I know, if I'm into a project, I will know virtually everything about it. Like, you know, so I'm a real kind of like music dork and snob. And so when somebody writes a review and it's negative, oftentimes the thing that bothered me was like, when people evaluated things, it was kind of like, “Well, we just don't like the same types of albums. I guess that's it, you know, beyond that, there's nothing really that I can draw from this that I could actually work on.” You know what I mean? It's like getting an essay back from a professor or something like this in college and just being like, “I didn't really like it, you know?” I'm like, “Well that doesn't really help me grow as an essayist or anything like this.” So at a certain point I just stopped reading reviews and stopped paying attention to that at all, you know? Cause I'm like, “I can't apply that to my work.” Yeah I thought that was a little dismissive. It was bizarre to me because they're like, “Oh, you're like a blog band or like a blog rock band.” I'm like, “I don't even know what that means.” Like, I don't, I mean, did people call bands zine rock bands like before that or like, or like New York Times Arts review, rock bands before? Like, who cares, it's just somebody's opinion, you know? Like, what does that even mean? So I remember we were like grouped in with a band that I've actually still to this day, I've never heard. And maybe they're great, but I just never had the opportunity or something. But there was a band called Tapes ‘n Tapes and they're like, “It's like Tapes ‘n Tapes.” And I'm like, “I don't know who they are. I mean, never heard them.” Several others where it's just like, we happened to come out around the same time. And I did hear some of the others that we were compared to, and I'm like, “Well, this is nothing to do with the way I write songs at all, but whatever, however it gets to people, it's not my business.” But I also found it was like kind of lazy to say, “Oh, because blogs are around at the same time.” Like, yeah, but there are other things, you know, other media sources that also wrote about the album. And it's not just blogs, but you know what, to me though, for the blog rock stuff, similar to zines, oftentimes these are the people who like work at record stores, who are really like, like work at college radio stations. Like kind of like my people, like the people who I know and have been friends with, the people who, who go off to write blogs or try to write blogs, especially at that time, more or less, they kind of like listened to everything and they have like a pretty decent sense of music. So for me, I was like, “That's a bit of a compliment. Like, that's fine with me.” That's better than somebody at some newspaper who's like, you know, 80 years old and doesn't really know what's going on, you know, and yeah, never really listened to anything. But the blog rock thing though, I would say this, like if it's anything like the zine thing, and I knew people who had zines back in the day, they were pretty full on invested. They would go to a lot of shows and they would generally know the climate of music. So in a way, it's kind of nice.

“Gimmie Some Salt” 

I actually just came across cause I'm doing a bit of a, like a nostalgic trip myself in my studio with all my cassette tapes and old CDs. And I dug up a lot of the original demos like that I did in my basement in like 2001 or 2 or whatever. This was one that I did, apparently had, the name was “Penny.” I don't know why it’s not Sally, “Sally hit the pavement.” It was Penny. I don't know where Penny came from, but I was, it was in the basement by myself. And I had all the elements in place. It was just a song that trudged down, it just descended for the entire song. It was kind of cool, I thought. But I was playing a cardboard box for percussion, which was interesting. I heard, you know, as I said, I didn't have a drum set, so I was just using whatever it was in the vicinity and it sounded like I was having a lot of fun on this demo cause I'm like shouting and there's a guitar that happens like, (sings guitar riff), like two guitars happening, but I'm like shouting in the background. So who knows what the hell was going on. But it's all kind of like, you know, it's kind of how it turned out.

This song, I guess, was made with Keith. If you listen to a lot of albums, you can tell the difference. I mean, I can tell definitely. I mean, just thinking about it, not really being sure, but thinking about the sonic qualities of these songs, I would say, if I had to guess, I would say Keith “Over and Over Again,” Keith, “Details of the War,” not “Heavy Metal,” because we recorded an original one with Keith for “Heavy Metal,” Keith “Home on Ice,” Keith “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood,” and I think Keith “Gimmie Some Salt.” I'm pretty sure that was all, that's all correct. And the other ones were Adam, and this is all just like Keith's sound is like slightly darker, you know? I like the lyrics, I like the “getting playing hard” line. I think that's pretty cool. I like the bass coming in late, you know, that's something that, it's pretty important to me. And maybe more now, I feel like The Walkmen did that to great effect. Like they really knew how to place the bass as an instrument. And I'm good friends with those guys. I feel like, you know, not to like blow them up too much because they're all assholes (laughs), no, I'm just kidding. But I think they had a good, a really good sense of like placement of instruments. I mean, Matt, to me is a great drummer. My point is, I like that it's not just like a drummer holding things down, as it were. It's like an actual instrument. So anyway, for this song, I like the impact of the bass coming in, which I remember having to discuss, was much more important and it'll be seen in a much better light than playing the bass all the way through, you know, stuff like this. So, which is like an early lesson, you know, that I don't think we really knew at the time, like, you know, “but I'm not playing for half the song.” You know, sometimes it's, sometimes it's like that.

“Sucka sucka MC’s, sing my favorite song.” Yeah, there's a bit of that. I was brought up, I'm from Philadelphia and I did hit the like golden age of hip hop. So I was like, we were all really admiring of all of these like, you know, De La Soul, Black Sheep, Tribe Called Quest, you know, Das EFX, whatever, like all of these hip hop people were coming out so that probably had a stronger influence than I even realize now. You know what I mean? Yeah I mean, it's like a very mild tribute to that sort of thing, but it is just, just fun. It's a really weird one, and especially the (sings) “boom, boom, boom” at the very end. I don't know what I was doing to prompt that, thinking that that was a reasonable thing to do in my little basement studio, but I play it live now and I played at the same time as Todd is playing bass and we're just looking at each other like, “What are we doing?” (laughs).  I mean, it works, but it is like, “Why does it work?” I don't know. It just, it kind of does.

“Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood”

This is also one of my favorites. So this was like my one protest song that maybe that I've ever written. Oh, no, no, I wrote one on New Fragility too. That was like an anti-gun violence song. But this one, when I moved back from New York, I stayed at my dad's house and he was living elsewhere and I was like using the basement for all of these recordings. And he went to the Naval Academy and he was in the Navy. He's, you know, affiliated with the military in that capacity. And I think his heart goes out to a lot of the people who have, who've died in wars, maybe more than I can understand, you know, for example. But he had this cutout of all these kids who died in Iraq, you know, arguably pointlessly. And, you know, when you see them all, all these pictures, like it was this long, it was this big cutout, like all these kids. And it said who they were, what their age was, where they were from, you know, and when you put a face on this stuff, it makes it that much more meaningful and it makes me that much angrier, frankly. So I was working in the basement and I came up and I saw this, I guess, I don't know, I might've been having lunch or I just was standing in front of it, reading all these kids' names. And it inspired me to write this “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood.” And it has a lot to do with how adults can misinterpret the intentions of children. Like just get it completely wrong and put them in harm's way. And it has everything to do with this sort of like pigheaded theory that, “they know what's right just because they're old enough to tell the difference between right and wrong” or some bullshit like this. Like, anyway, so it's the last line, “They are going out to bars, they're getting into cars. I've seen like,” you know, they're drinking and driving and like “I know what's good for these kids, so I'm gonna, you know, fucking send 'em off and get 'em shot up,” that sort of thing. I was like full of that kind of anger. “America, please help them.” That's that. At that time, I had a real sense of like the country, I mean, it's even more difficult now, but maybe, but at the time I was full of anger for the people who were in positions of leadership trying to tell people what to do and being cowards themselves. And I had evidence in front of me of kind of their cowardice. And so I wrote a song about it.

“Now that everybody's here, could we please have your attention? There's nothing left to fear now that Bigfoot is captured,” Bigfoot, meaning Osama bin Laden, and I was in New York during 9/11. I lived up there and I remember like, people didn't like Bush. And then he came in as like, “the heroic man, cause he listened to the news and he had a heroic face,” and all this other shit. I know that everybody has like a more positive light on him now because of the idiot who's in charge at the moment. But I must say at the time, nobody was that fond of him. And I don't like people, not taking the lives of these kids seriously. That's all. You know what I mean? So it had to do with that. And I hate it when people think they know best. And it's just like, I think it's the dumbest thing that there's this macho theory that “if you puff out your chest and pretend to know what's right, then you're a strong person.” I think that's such bullshit. So vulnerability is very important to me as a manly thing, you know what I mean? And admitting you don't fucking know all the time. So this is in direct response to that, you know, situation. A lot of people don't know that. I'm happy to point that out actually, that this was like as close as I kind of get to a protest song and it's like catchy, but there's meaning behind it.

And the repetitive scenario, like I feel like, maybe a bit of Patti Smith there, you know, obviously Van Morrison. I like the effect of like, you know, hammering on a lyric if it makes sense in the context of the song, of course. But to me live especially, it really has a dramatic effect. I mean, we even counted “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood,” we've even counted, how many times I sang “child star” and it was 30, and I was like, “Oh my God, that's, I said that 30 times,” but it doesn't feel like it. I mean, or it does, I don't know, whatever. Oh, okay, so that's another thing that I can say about “Tidal Wave” is that, it was kind of hilarious. But so not only did I count 30 times, did I say “child stars” and that was interesting. But also when, after mixing, we went up to this guy's studio. His name was Joe Lambert and he was in Midtown Manhattan, or I think it was just me and someone else from the band. And Adam Lasus was there too. And the song didn't, I think it had a fade, but it lasted just like a couple measures too long or something. And I was like, “Well, it's too long.” And we didn't fade it, we didn't really fade it at the right time. So, you know, a bit of an oversight. And I was like, “I don't like where it ends. It's just slightly too long.” So in the studio with the tape machine, cause it was recorded to tape, right? I was just standing there, I was like trying to time the ending. So that's why the album ends as it does. I was like, you know, (sings) “child stars” boom. You know, I just hit the stop button on the tape machine when I thought it was the right time to finish. So, yeah, so that's kind of cool. That's a cool little aspect of that, that song. Good way to end the album too.

I remember, you know, nobody knew us. I don't know if we really petitioned or tried to do it, negotiate anything with record labels. I think we did, actually we got it mixed, mastered, everything was like, you know, I was working some like carpentry job and restaurant job and I paid for it. It was a very modest amount with this stuff. And just printed up copies, which were bought immediately. A lot of CDs, but a lot of what was happening was like, we kind of released it in 2004, but a real release was 2005, like the one that the general public knows. But it was kind of finished in 2004. So I think we were already starting to like sell it to people, you know, through our website or whatever. And I remember we were already like, getting attention for live shows and I think people liked us live, were like a little bit lukewarm in the album, but it started to kinda like join together. And like I remember we were getting so many orders for CDs that we had to have like UPS drop off like 20 boxes to apartments and like, I delivered CDs myself to the independent record stores. And they were like, “Oh, what is your capacity in the band?” And I'm like, “Well, I'm not the manager. I mean, just, I sang on this,” and it was pretty cool cause it was like, it was like soup to nuts. Everything was being done. And I remember this, so we played a show with The National guys and I think Aaron (Dessner) called me and asked if we wanted to go on a tour with them. And I thought, I was like, “You mean play somewhere that's not New York or Philadelphia? That's such a weird concept” (laughs). And then my next thought was, “We're running to like post offices all the time to sell our CDs.” I'm like, “How are we supposed to make this work? Like, are we supposed to bring boxes and like, go to post offices in different cities to like mail out the CD orders cause we were doing it ourselves?” Then we figured out, like, or then I discovered that you work with a distributor and all this other stuff. So that's what we did. Kept it independent. Even though record labels were interested and it wasn't like, you know, no offense to any of them, I know that some of them might've taken it personally, but it was just the nature of independence was kind of important to me at that time, especially at that time. I mean, I've been independent since, but especially at that time, it felt like everything just felt like that. The album felt like that, the way we were all doing it felt like that. I don't know, it just seemed to feel right, to be independent. And I was really, really, I think a little bit heavy handed about that stuff. I think we hired a manager eventually, but I said, I was like very specific, I said, you know, “I want to do public radio and college radio, that's all.” And I was like, “ want to play at like art museums or art galleries, you know, I want to do stuff like that.” Obviously, for better or worse, when things start to get bigger, it starts to get a little bit out of your control. I mean, for me, before I did an interview with a magazine, I would want to know what that magazine, like, what they stood for, you know what I mean? And I remember, I was doing research on like everyone, and then eventually it got to be too much. I mean, I did 15 interviews straight in Milan, flying from France to Milan, and then flying that night to Berlin. So in other words, I think I just resigned myself to being a little bit like out of my control. So, which is fine. Finally the healthy thing to do. Yeah, it's okay. And when everybody said, “Hey, how does it feel to now be successful?” I was like, “Well, to me still success is knowing when you're finished an album and then being confident enough to put it into the world.” Really, that takes a lot of audacity and that was more success to me than like, “You moved X amount of units and like people know about you in Australia” or something like this. That to me is just like popular not to be confused with successful. I think, I mean, I think it was because I was getting a lot of attention already for like in a smaller fashion for my acoustic live shows and during that time, starting to see it a little bit with the live shows, with Clap Your Hands so I could sort of see it coming. Like, it wasn't like a total shock to me, but I think, yeah, it was also just like a fantasy of like, “Oh, this might happen,” and, you know, it was just a play on that idea. “Success is so forbidding, but it makes me think I'm winning.” Yeah, I mean, I just heard a lot of horror stories too about people who, you know, my big problem is like people would say, they would almost attach their identity to whether or not they were recognized in, you know, in the street. And I thought that was really, that's kind of sad, you know? And it has nothing to do with the work. Like, nothing. 

I think it's gotten a lot harder to be independent for me anyway. I think the only regret might have come because streaming services sort of really took over and it is nice to have someone on your side who will do the dirty work behind the scenes, who might help you cut through the noise. Like, let's put it this way, to remain independent means you're dedicating yourself to your loyal fan base, right? But you're not necessarily growing in any sort of commercially viable sense. That takes a lot more money behind the scenes, that it takes a lot more people behind the scenes. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do. So I would say this, like part of me regrets that some of my, to me, better work has been overlooked. The Tourist, for example, uh, New Fragility, Only Run, like honestly, a lot of the stuff since the first album on an artistic level has been impressive (laughs), if I do say so myself. But I think it was, it's a little bit more overlooked than it could have been if I had jumped in with someone. And, you know, I don't really regret it though, because. I'm super lucky to have the fans that I do, and I think they're like, they're in it to win it, you know, for the long haul. 

20 years later, I think that I have the perspective to appreciate this album much more than I did 20 years ago when, directly after it was finished. And I think a lot of that has to do with listening to the album a billion times before you release it, you know, just the normal. Also I was, I think that I was, I am, and I was pretty self-critical to the point at which I have trouble in the moment seeing things positively. So now I, now I love it. So I love my little self on this album (laughs). 

Outro:
Dan Nordheim:
Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Self-Titled), including the 20th anniversary edition. Instrumental music by Generifus. Thanks for listening.

Credits:

"Clap Your Hands!"

"Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away"

"Over and Over Again (Lost and Found)"

"Sunshine and Clouds (And Everything Proud)"

"Details of the War"

"The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth"

"Is This Love?”

"Heavy Metal"

"Blue Turning Gray"

“In This Home on Ice”

"Gimmie Some Salt"

"Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood"

All words by Alec Ounsworth. All songs by Alec Ounsworth except “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth” by Alec Ounsworth, Lee Sargent, Robbie Guertin, Tyler Sargent and Sean Greenhalgh. “Blue Turning Gray” by Tyler Sargent.

© & ℗ 2005 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Clap Your Hand Say Yeah are Alec Ounsworth, Lee Sargent, Robbie Guertin, Tyler Sargent, and Sean Greenhalgh

Songs 1, 4, 6, 7, and 8 produced by Adam Lasus and CYHSY

Recorded and Mixed by Adam Lasus at Fireproof Recording in Brooklyn, NY

Songs 2, 3, 5, 10, 11, and 12 recorded by Keith Souza at Machines with Magnets in Providence, Rhode Island

Additional overdubs and mixing done at Fireproof by Adam Lasus

Song 9 recorded by Tyler Sargent

Mastered by Joe Lambert at Trutone Mastering

Episode Credits: 

Intro/Outro Music:

“Rearrangel” by generifus, from the album, Rearrangel

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam