Emma Warren - 06/02/07
A year is a long time in the modern age. It seems forever ago that words like MySpace were first uttered and it?s hard to remember a time when new bands didn?t fly off your desktop with a fully formed online universe and fan base.
This time last year CYHSY were primed to burst out of their online cocoon with a self-titled debut, proving in one carnivalesque art-indie swoop that you didn't need to have a record deal or be vacuum-packed into skinny jeans to be the year's hottest find.
Ten months and 300,000 record sales later - the first 25,000 of which were distributed in brilliantly DIY style from bass player Tyler Sargent's apartment - the East Coast five-piece seem like an established, if joyfully deviant part of the musical firmament. That they've released another album so fast is further evidence that the hype was justified ? despite the fact that the once super-hip sound they defined has been overtaken by the next breed of neon-clad trendy young things.
Songs like 'Five Easy Pieces' would have Morrisey wishing he'd written it back in 1986, or the barely-contained chaos of live favourite 'Satan Said Dance' reminds the listener what they loved so much about their debut.
The band hasn't leapt off in a new direction (what next? Americana or arch Englishness?), but have instead capitalised on the tension between Oundsworth's spiralling vocals and the driving, zealous music that stops him from metaphorically sailing away into the ether.
The fact that it was produced by Dave 'Soft Bulletin' Fridmann in plush NY studio Tarbox hasn't compromised their trenchantly home-recorded sound at all: Some Loud Thunder still has you reaching for the connections at the back of your speakers to check they're working properly. And of course, they remain ? in the traditional sense, at least ? unsigned. So, CYHSY: striking a blow for punky DIY and breathtakingly good music, both.
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