It’s every experimental musician’s dream to get together with four friends and create a six- figure selling debut album that could put them on the national stage for years.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! is that group of musicians, achieving stardom they never expected with their self-titled debut. Yet many are curious if their sophomore album, Some Loud Thunder, can live up to the hype.

There’s no doubt: this album is worth listening to. The first track is awful, but that should not be surprising for long-time listeners: it mirrors the blithe “carousel” quality of the first track of their first album.

The second track, “Emily Jean Stock,” easily delivers for CYHSY. The best track is the smooth, dance - inducing hit “Yankee Go Home,” so much so that a reviewer at Pandora.com wondered if CYHSY might have purposely held back on this album as a business move.

If the band can get revenue due to the merit of just a few songs on this album, the logic runs, then maybe on the next album they can exert themselves to their full potential and still get lots of interest.

Rating: 4/5