Everybody knows clapping your hands and saying yeah isn’t a one-man job. You can clap hands or you can say yeah, but doing both at once? Preposterous. It took four men, under the guise of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, to properly clap hands and say yeah. Properly clapping and saying yeah must have been even harder than imagined, though, as CYHSY have been silent since the mixed reception of their 2007 album Some Loud Thunder (TMT Review).
Lead, um, Clapper Alec Ounsworth intends to break that silence, but all by his lonesome on his debut solo album Mo Beauty, out October 20 on ANTI-Records. Well, not entirely by his lonesome: Backing up Ounsworth are New Orleans music staples George Porter, Jr. (bass), Stanton Moore (drums), Robert Walter (keys), and Mark Sutton (baritone and pedal-steel guitars). Those guys seem like they’re capable of clapping and maybe even saying yeah. If not, they’ve got plenty of help on the album with appearances from New Orleans musicians Mark Mullins, Craig Klein, Greg Hicks, Washboard Chaz, Shannon Powell, John Boute, Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, and Meschiya Lake.
That’s an awful lot of New Orleans. Makes sense, too: Ounsworth says that “New Orleans informed the spirit of the record, as it should.” But don’t get any big ideas that it’s a specifically New Orleans record, as Ounsworth also says “most of the songs weren’t written specifically for New Orleans.” Okay, so, some New Orleans, but not too much. Got it.
Mo Beauty, mo tracklists:
1. Modern Girl (...with scissors)
2. Bones in the Grave
3. Holy, Holy, Holy Moses (song for New Orleans)
4. That is not my Home (after Bruegel)
5. Idiots in the Rain
6. South Philadelphia (Drug Days)
7. What Fun.
8. Me and You, Watson
9. Obscene Queen Bee #2
10. When You've No Eyes
