It may have been assembled by NME as an even field of Next Big Things — but there was no doubt whom everyone had come to see. Carried across the Atlantic on the back of a feverishly received debut album, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are in a position that their two de facto support bands would surely envy. Indeed, with a 7pm start time, it was a wonder that even a tenth of the eventual audience was present to see Battle.
The South London openers played like hungry Cure fans in search of their next meal. A good thing, of course — as was the catchiness of their songs — but the magic only really happened two songs in, when the foppish singer Jason Bavanandan stepped out from behind the keyboard and played his guitar in a manner that suggested a poltergeist was trying to wrest it away from him.
Whatever success Dr Dog’s place on this bill amounted to, “overnight” doesn’t describe it. The Philadelphia combo have already released three albums. Boasting three beards and three hats, their affirmative Boomer-rock appears to have been entirely cooked from the Beatles’ White Album, finished with a drizzle of West Coast harmonies.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah seemed pleased with themselves — pleased enough, at any rate, to feel they didn’t need to relinquish the air of aloofness. When a balloon kept floating into the keyboardist Lee Sargent’s airspace, he tetchily attempted to catch it — itself one show of emotion more than the swarthy frontman Alec Ounsworth can muster. Instead Ounsworth strummed like a man killing time and sang like a drowning David Byrne. And if, on record, the new single In This Home on Ice recalls the combustible indie rock of Sonic Youth, their live counterparts are reduced to something less cool. It might be that in New York — where audiences are as jaded as the bands — polite applause is a favoured mode of appreciation. Tonight, however, Ounsworth shouldn’t kid himself that it’s anything other than damnation by faint praise.