Unless you've been living under a rock that is itself under a larger rock-- or you're not an indie rock fan-- the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah story should have a folkloric familiarity to you. To read an indie blog or webzine in 2005 was to hear the tale of five brave lads from Philly and Brooklyn who bypassed the Byzantine conduits of record labels and PR agencies, selling more than six figures' worth of their debut album on the merits of the music alone.

But online opinion is like a magnifying glass in sunlight: Whatever it admires too closely for too long is enlarged, then incinerated. There was truth in the emerging narrative, but it reflected longing more than reality; the band's story became the stuff of myth, and myths beg to be debunked. That crystallization was completed when mainstream publications began filling their pages with identical articles about the internet as independent music's democratic new frontier and adopting CYHSY as the trend's avatar.

This was how, in the space of a couple months, CYHSY were transformed from a unique phenomenon to a creative ideal, and the music contained on their still-terrific debut album became difficult to hear above the din of warring ideologues. "Two years ago," the Independent Online's Andrew Purcell wrote in a January 12 article, "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah rewrote the rules of pop music, but this won't save them from the kicking that's coming their way." He's probably right, but this isn't necessary if we're careful not to get our distaste for packaged mythology mixed up with distaste for the music itself. Before CYHSY's sophomore album Some Loud Thunder materialized, the question of how the band would follow its hot-topic debut seemed hopelessly complex. But given that the group had little to do with its own hype-- and that Alec Ounsworth is by all credible reports a very private person who disdains public opinion-- the answer, in retrospect, is obvious: They made another Clap Your Hands Say Yeah record.

If Some Loud Thunder isn't as consistent as the debut, it's an adequate follow-up that contains a handful of fantastic songs, a handful of uneven ones, and a handful of duds. Famed producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Mogwai) brings his usual touch to the album-- it's denser than the debut, with even more towering harmonies. The only time Fridmann does the band a disservice is on the title track, which opens the record with the same sort of vague antagonism with which "Clap Your Hands!" kicked off the debut. "Some Loud Thunder" seems like a solid, peppy indie rock song, but it's such a mess that it's hard to tell for sure-- pickled in ugly distortion, it sounds like a bad rip. (Ounsworth claims the album is intended to be heard on vinyl; perhaps it works better there.) As a mission statement and a fuck-off, "Some Loud Thunder" is even more effective than "Clap Your Hands!": The latter was obviously intended to be daunting, while the former is rich with ambiguity. Was it meant to sound shitty or did it just turn out that way? Regardless, it's a drag to listen to.

The most engaging songs here zero in on what CYHSY do best: cracked, brassy vocals, shaggy rhythms, and luxuriant melodies. The flickering luau-rock of "Mama, Won't You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning?" finds Ounsworth's clarion voice at its most affecting, eventually washing out in a tide of woozy harmonies. "Love Song No. 7", with its slithering vocal line and stark piano, is distinct from the band's usual fizzy shimmer; it's darker and finer than anything else on the record. "Underwater (You and Me)" profits from its density, with tight coils of reverbed guitar spring-loading the bouncy melody. These tracks find CYHSY tweaking their template with more sumptuous, Fridmann-assisted layers, with excellent results.

An entire album of songs this well-tuned would have trumped the debut, but Some Loud Thunder bogs down in some uneven ideas. The transition from bright acoustic jangle to crispy garage-psych on "Emily Jean Stock" is vitalizing, but Ounsworth's drooping affectations emphasize the hokier qualities of his voice. The goofy yet fun "Satan Said Dance" is an indie-dance track laced with twittering sci-fi keyboards; one wonders if the indie world is comfortable enough with its relationship to dancing to enjoy a song about Hell being a place where Satan makes you dance. I have a soft spot for the admittedly overcooked "Yankee Go Home", a Destroyer-caliber piece of musical theater where Ounsworth gets to inflect the hell out of lubricated words naturally suited to his slippery voice, like "Honolulu." Rounding out these problematic tracks are stillborns like the meandering "Arm and Hammer" and the throwaway gypsy instrumental "Upon Encountering the Crippled Elephant".

In the end, one wonders if the hype didn't exert a subtle influence on CYHSY after all. Consider that Ounsworth, who represents himself as being neither comfortable nor interested in anything resembling a spotlight, has answered that hype with a murkier, weirder album than the one that spawned it, one that seems pulled in too many different directions. Then consider how the title Some Loud Thunder seems, deliberately or not, to refer to the very extra-musical cacophony that Ounsworth claims to be unaffected by. A wheel's stationary hub might not care about its spin, but it still feels the pressure of all those whirling spokes.