Clap Your Hands Say Yeah songs pin some unsettling ripples in any kind of tranquility that could be brought to mind. There's a reason that the heightened level of sensitivity kicks in when there's a relative absence of sound. We're ready for it. The "it" might not be a meltdown or a total fallout, but it's as if there's already a heavy hand on our shoulder or approaching fingers moving toward our neck.
Lead singer Alec Ounsworth sings here, "I wanna be like you when the voices stop," and while he sings elsewhere about feeling safe and sound, "so safe for now," all of these sentiments give us the willies, as if we're watching the clocking for the unraveling to chime, for the big hand and the little hand to start bleeding up there on the wall. It could just be that the bogeyman becomes us at certain times, but then again, it's darkest right before the dawn and there's always that moment when your chest is tight and your breath is thin and halting before everything recalibrates and the terror behaves as if it never happened. Sooner or later, everything will turn out the way it was always supposed to, with or without the dramatics.