M'Lou Elkins
CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH
w/ Babehoven
4/4/25 – Tulips – Fort Worth TX
Photos and Review © Juan R. Govea
Doors opened at 7pm Friday at Fort Worth Tulips for indie rock group headliners Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and touring group Babehoven. The openers, fronted by Maya Bon and collaborator Ryan Albert as a duo, performed with a full band that kept the crowd energized and anticipating the night. It was expected to be a gracious and sentimental pallet cleanser for fans in Cowtown, with ticket prices that started at $32.
Check out our concert photo gallery of Babehoven below:
The venue floor began to fill while the group from Hudson, NY performed songs from their 2024 album Water’s Here in You. Babehoven’s folk-rock thread ties shoegazed melodies with a tip of the hat to Americana country that completely embraced the crowd.
While frontwoman Bon is the sole member of her project, in 2022, the lineup changed to Bon and Ryan Albert. As a new duo, they announced their debut full-length album, Light Moving Time, released on October 28 through indie record label Double Double Whammy. The first song from that release started the evening with “Break the Ice.”
The venue was nearly packed inside and out, from the patio to the front of the stage, awaiting Alec Ounsworth and his bandmates touring from Philadelphia. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s debut self-titled album hit streaming platforms 20 years ago. The anniversary tour celebrating the release kept concert-goers thrilled by the group’s lively operatic vocals and heavy instrumentals.
After opening with the titled track “Some Loud Thunder” from the 2007 album, frontman Ounsworth informed the packed hall, “We’re playing the entire debut album and a few other songs.”
When the organ playing hinted the album’s intro song that has been heard live by a few given the chance, hands went up in the air for “Clap Your Hands!” Songs like “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth” had fans dancing and chanting to the early 2000s underground rowdiness. Ounsworth replied to the howls and said he and his group had “rarely played in Texas, and you’ve all been welcoming and great, thank you.” The night ended with an encore of “Where They Perform Miracles” and “Satan Said Dance.”
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah has released six albums, with their latest, New Fragility, released in 2021. Ounsworth, now 47 years old, has played with groups like The Pelican Picnic and Flashy Python. His first solo album, Mo Beauty, was released on October 20, 2009, on Anti-Records. Band members from Dr. Dog, The Walkmen, and Man Man have shared the stage with the frontman.
Check out our concert photo gallery of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah below:
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