Clap Your Hands Say Yeah has two major artistic impulses. The first is to write and perform beautiful pop-rock tunes as sincerely as possible. The second is to fuck them up. That’s a move this Brooklyn/Philly quintet made on Some Loud Thunder, its cooly-received 2007 follow-up to a 2005 debut that was embraced to the point of near-religious fanaticism.

With Hysterical, CYHSY nails the balance between earnestness and artful deviation. Having learned hard lessons from Thunder with Dave Fridmann — a fantastic producer who nevertheless makes every band sound like his own Mercury Rev — the group here clicks with John Congleton, a sonic savant who favors vast, robust sounds but tempers them with detail. Hysterical suggests that leader Alec Ounsworth is still smarting from hype-and-crash syndrome and maybe one particular journalist: On album midway point “Yesterday, Never,” the singer asks, “In your article, how did you put it?/ You had me ’round your little finger, did you?” as earthquake drums and tsunami bass temporarily interrupt ELO-style synth fluttering. There’s got to be a story there.

Song after song, a theme emerges: The past is an enemy, and the only solution is forward movement: “Letting up and letting… read more »