This double bill at Sonar had quite a back-story. The National had been booted from its headlining slot on this tour due to the surging popularity of opening act Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, although the zeitgeist has maybe gotten a little ahead of itself in elevating this particular bunch from house-party status to the main stage. For the record, the National has been treading the boards for a few years and has at least one darling in its catalogue with 2005's Alligator. Critical plaudits mean nothing, however, after a public wedgie like the one these guys have just endured. At Sonar they more or less slunk onto the stage for a disconsolate 11 songs, during which the band disappeared into what might be described as a charisma-hole. This is only speculation, of course. Perhaps vocalist Matt Berninger, under better circumstances, is a dynamic, Mephisto-like presence, but, distinctively weary voice aside, his anti-performance registered as defeat. The band wisely let its music do the talking, and if the National's songs aren't exactly instant winners, the nuanced delivery and atmospherics compensate. During "Cherry Tree", multi-instrumentalist Padma Newsome stepped forward to strum, pluck, saw, and otherwise molest his violin as the song built to a vicious climax, sounding like incidental music from The Wicker Man. The crowd went from offering polite condolences to expressing a polite admiration.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah arrived after an interminable wait, and muddled through a shorter set of light-hearted post rock. The Brooklyn five-piece further demonstrates the axiom that a certain type of student with a hard-on for Vice magazine will fall for anything that comes from New York (except for the National). Singer Alec Ounsworth's dreamy insolence explains his growing status as art-school crumpet, and the rest of them are likeable enough. It probably wasn't important to the sold-out crowd, but the band's propensity to all play at once, with no regard for dynamics or craft, was maddening when stacked against the National's musical intelligence. Ounsworth's wheedling tone was also a little hard to take, being an unholy cross between Gary Numan, Dan Bejar, and Rufus Wainwright. But when CYHSY broke free of its debt to New Order—"Details of the War" used to be a major crowd-pleaser 20-odd years ago, when it was known as "Temptation"—things took a turn for the better. "Satan Said Dance" was the highlight. Keyboardist Robbie Guertin emerged as the outfit's musical soul as he bashed out a syncopated synth part and random blasts of noise that suggested the band had a recent sit-down with Afrika Bambaataa. The stage was invaded by two whole people as the brief set climaxed, but foppish insurgency aside, chances are that more than half of this cold-blooded crowd will have moved on to the next set of beautiful creatures by the time CYHSY's second album is finished.

Georgia Straight, October 2005