As the major recording companies slowly lose the stranglehold they have maintained over music for decades, musicians and fans are grabbing their newfound freedoms and running with them.
Independent labels or collectives are springing up around the world as musicians realise that a small group of passionate, dedicated individuals can do as much, if not more, for their music than the heavy-footed dinosaurs of the past did.
In conjunction with the changes happening to the recording industry, a new media landscape is also being born. New generations of bloggers claim to be taking music back to the people who have learnt to distrust the mainstream media.
It is this changing landscape that has seen the success of bands such as Brooklyn’s Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, who rose to prominence courtesy of a blog-driven frenzy that hyped their sublime debut album straight into the mainstream.
The band went from personally mailing out thousands of copies of their debut album to international attention and touring in a matter of months, all on the back of some great reviews by influential tastemakers.
”That was really only during the summer that we were mailing out the album ourselves,” says the band’s guitarist Lee Sargent. ”As soon as we started touring the album, we had to get a distribution deal.”
On the back of this hype, the band went on to sell 110 000 copies of their 2005 debut in the United States — without a record deal. When courting record labels came knocking and could not provide a satisfactory answer to the band’s question — ”What can you do for us that we can’t do for ourselves?” — they were sent packing.
Now with the launch of their second album, Some Loud Thunder, the band are once again releasing their music without the backing of a label, taking it directly to retailers. According to Billboard magazine this means that instead of the average $2 per album that a young band will recoup, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are looking at a substantial return of $6 per album sold.
As the debate rages about the pros and cons of true independence, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have just got on with doing what they do best — writing and recording incredible songs.
Sargent says the band feel that the rise of the music blogger has been great because it is all about taking the power away from the bigger guys, but he hastily adds that the hype and subsequent backlash have been quite a scary experience.
”Some dude from Willamsbourg commented on some blog and said something like, ‘Those guys are all old and balding and live on Park Slope,”’ he laughs. ”Yeah, sorry, dude, can’t do anything about that. I don’t quite know what he was saying either … How does that affect the music?”
Well, if it is having an affect on the music, let’s hope that the band continue to go bald and never move from Park Slope, because Some Loud Thunder — released at the end of January — is a monumental record.
Gone are the blissful indie rave-ups that populated their first record. Instead, Some Loud Thunder sees the band enlisting the help of Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev producer Dave Friedman to concoct a dark, dense, brooding record.
”The first album was really just us starting a band and documenting it,” says Sargent. ”This was more about making a record.”
He says choosing Friedman to produce the record seemed like a natural fit. ”I am a big fan of bands like Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and Mogwai. I like a lot of stuff that he’s done. His sound is all over it, like those bells that are on the record. But it’s not too heavy.”
And he is right. Some Loud Thunder still sounds like the band that we love, but this time they have taken some time to craft a dense, layered album that may not grab you the way their debut did, but which will offer up a grander vision after repeated listens.
The original reference points are there. You can still hear the Talking Heads and Neutral Milk Hotel, but now there are elements of The Beatles and Brian Wilson thrown into the mix to take it to that next level.
Fans of their debut will not be disappointed; the sublime stomper Satan Said Dance will have indie kids the world over invading the dance floor this summer, while the sublime Yankee Go Home is as good as anything the band have recorded.
”It’s kind of boring doing the same thing twice,” says Sargent, and after a couple of listens of this new album, you have to agree. Everybody together now, clap your hands and say yeah, for progression!