Live Review. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!/Cold War Kids - Shepherds Bush Empire - 13/02/07.

Big stages expose little bands. This is the kind of stage that would’ve embarrassed Clap Your Hands Say Yeah a year and an album ago. They were dwarfed in the tent at Reading last year. Growing into your size is crucial. Being thrown into venues you’re not ready for works for only a few, and for Cold War Kids, they fall into the majority.

Not that they didn’t try. They’re a decent band and all, but they filled half the stage and half the stage only. Granted the back half seemed to be largely rammed with the aforementioned headliners equipment, but even in their corner they looked scared. Then again, not being scared, would probably make them sub-human, or vastly arrogant, the latter of which they certainly are not.

I say that with conviction thanks to the nature of their songs. Sensitive American indie-rock it is on the whole – nothing knew there then – but it’s the use of bass and the vocal that seem to set them apart from other similarly ilked contemporaries. Nathan Willett’s squawling rasp sporadically filled the gaps left by the rest of the band. He flitted between instrument-less and standing frontman, in the middle of the stage, dominating; and sat in the corner, on his electric piano. Not shy and engaging, just shy. Step forward sir Willett and show us what you got.

But not to worry. Hang Me Out To Dry is a tune indeed and I bet I wasn’t the only punter chanting “too, too, too many times” on my way to a half-time toilet break. This show won’t damage their reputation. They were received well, they played their hearts out and indisputably they’re brimming with potential – expect them back in a venue such as this sometime soon.

Meanwhile, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! seem to have become a rather large monster of a band. Dispute poor reactions to thier live gigs, and mixed indeed reviews of the album, they’ve crept up to selling out Shepherds Bush Empire. Perhaps if you have a sort of love-them-or-hate-them vibe to your support, the more the haters hate, the more the lovers love - and devotion follows. Love is infectious. Hate also, but less so.

On my previous witnessing of CYHSY I’ve been sorely disappointed. No voice, no oomph, no confidence, no nothing. Hear, today, on this big stage, in front of all these people, they’re a different band. Their sound is full, their dynamic immense. They rip, balls first, into Some Loud Thunder, first track on the new record, and it’s dazzling. The annoying fuzz is gone and it sounds crisp. Album highlight Satan Says Dance follows and confirms a number of things.

Firstly, that Alec Ounsworth is a mighty weird individual. In his grey shirt, cream waistcoat, flannel trousers, bizarre shoes and thin fuzzy hair he could pass for a quiet intellectual. A librarian perhaps. Put him on stage repetitively singing “satan, satan, satan, satan,” with his fabulously cracked vocal, over a destructively pulsating bass-line whilst powerful red lights pump out onto one and all, a different figure is presented.

With his strange wiggle and timid banter, an anti-star is developing. A true eccentric. Sure his voice is odd, but it’s grown. It fills the room and leads the party.

Somewhere along the line they’ve acquired hits. Is This Love? went down like it was Debaser, and the bizarre encore-beginner of “clap your hands, well I feel so lonely,” from the skewed intro of their debut was greeted like a sing-along classic.

How did this happen? From being a band that you tentatively offered to friends but no-one had ever really heard of and people just complained about the voice, they’ve become heroes – not just that, at long last, they can play. Finally then, their potential has been realised. This was good, very good.