Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – The Tourist

Think of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and you'll likely remember their eponymous debut album from 2005, characterised by Alec Ounsworth's distinctive warble on the zeitgeisty single The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth. More than a decade later, it's perhaps both a blessing and a curse for the group (who have gone through a complete line-up refresh in the intervening years) that despite subsequent releases their success is still measured against that definitive debut record.

Following on from 2014's self-released Only Run, CYHSY are back with The Tourist, and you can't help but feel this is a band – or a frontman – intent on giving it one last shot. Opener The Pilot shoots close to Band of Horses territory with its melodic, acoustic strum, but thankfully it unfolds with more gravitas. A three minute opener that hums with frustration, loping along on mournful bass, loose beats and a niggling hi-hat, it's one of the album's most poignant moments, at once pronounced and understated.

A Chance To Cure follows, all synthy and feedback-spiked. This could easily be a cut from Wild Beasts' latest record, and further underscores the reserve – and penchant for electronica – that Ounsworth currently inhabits. Down (is Where I Want To Be) sees some spark of the CYHSY of old (and some political bite, as Ounsworth shrugs, 'You can't expect the government to let you in') swelling and bursting into a garage jam whose sprightlyness is at odds with its lyrical distress. Unfolding Above Celibate Moon (Los Angeles Nursery Rhyme) similarly takes a while to unfurl, this time, into harp drenched blues and psych fuzz guitars.

As The Tourist continues to unravel, so too do the tracks – captivating in parts, but lacking a unifying urgency. The slow tempo songs tend to drag, and when CYHSY do sprightly, they rely on variations of the same frenetic beat that you can't help think sounded a lot more vital back in, well, 2005.