Well, quasi-maharishi commune guy with crossed-eyes, squiffy grin and odd musky scent, you really are spoiling us. Just 12 months ago CYHSY’s debut got us all wired with chunks of wonky, e-number drenched indie and already we’re dribbling over a freshly offered platter of unpredictable appetizers; saturated this time it seems in hallucinogens, rich in flavour, the result of a recipe that tastes so positively slapdash it could probably never be repeated. And it’s nice to hold a thing of such apparent rarity on the tip of your tongue, no matter how peculiar. And when we’re talking of a band for whom the backlash began before most had even sampled their full range of quirks, ‘Some Loud Thunder’ very much reinforces the creative foundations of a group who feel, on this evidence, like they could just keep growing upwards, exponentially.
We can be quite sure now that this is more than just half an idea, the weird Strokes or whatever, when each song seems like an individual scribbled brainstorm followed like a map. It’s still easy to recall the off-kilter insensibilities of bands like Neutral Milk Hotel when taking in Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s eccentric jangle-indie slant, but if anything Alec Ounsworth et al supersede them by not only thriving on sound mangles and hall of mirrors perspectives, but by throttling melody at every possible turn, wrestling the bastard to the ground and dragging it through ritual after ritual at their behest. And there are moments when it flies from all angles. Not one gets away.
Take the Small Faces guitar lick gatecrashing the dreamy acoustic trickle of ‘Emily Jean Stock’ with such blistering warmth it ushers in a percussive Flaming Lips framework and spirals up harmonically towards the clouds. Or the way the uplifting chorus to the surprising ‘Mama, Won’t You Keep Them Castles In The Air & Burning’ softly erupts out of a bed as bewilderingly psychedelic as its title, like a Kinks and T-Rex harmonic hippie alliance, probably involving daisies, definitely in a breeze under the midday sunshine, maybe in some idyllic clearing. Or indeed the way the marching, chiming carnival that is ‘Underwater (You & Me)’ hangs entirely off the incredible central bass-line, sending out Catherine-wheel style satellite melodies, ending up eventually, deservedly in orbit itself.
A lozenge has not yet been developed to sooth Ounsworth’s chalk and cheese truffle of a voice, and thus it shall no doubt remain the main stumbling block for most. But listen right past those serrated edges and slurred lines and there is a strong, assured vocal with a firm sense of direction, kind of drunk on its own intentions. And he absolutely owns closing narcotic-folk masterpiece ‘Five Easy Pieces’, emoting like he’s howling at the moon as harmonicas, guitars, bass and floaty feedback evolve amorphously to crescendo around him. There are difficult moments, ‘Love Song No.7’ and ‘Arm & Hammer’ for instance do seem deliberately obtuse, but yin and yang exists strongly as a concept on this record and you can be sure that there are two ridiculously accessible moments to counter them. All in all this album is sort of like a bungee jump through ‘Sgt. Pepper…’, and that can’t be all bad, can it.