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What are we to make of the world? In many ways, the title New Fragility perfectly sums up our collective state of unease and anxiety, but it's particularly apt for singer songwriter Alec Ounsworth AKA Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and the trauma he's spent the best part of three years processing. InchIt's pretty personal, Inch says Ounsworth. InchIt's about what I think we're all experiencing at the moment, certainly here in the United States anyway - trying to move forward amidst an almost cruel uncertainty.Inch Taken from the David Foster Wallace short story 'Forever Overheard', from the collection Brief Interviews With Hideous Men - InchYou have grown into a new fragility, Inch says the story's adolescent narrator - the title track documents what happens directly after a long relationship comes to an end, and what's discovered soon after. InchThere comes a period of making up for lost time in a changed world, Inch says Ounsworth, Inchand now is a time of predictable stupidity.Inch InchI never want to take another chance on anyoneInch, Ounsworth laments over a steady chug of muted guitar chords, delicate piano, and bustling drums. InchI can't believe the things I do to myselfInch. It's a song that takes a long, hard look at itself in the mirror and doles out some uncomfortable truths. Yet it also showcases what Ounsworth has become so masterful at - couching a certain level of seriousness in something fun. Something danceable. It's what's powered some of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's most memorable moments, and what makes New Fragility such an accomplished, affecting record. Powerful too, taking aim at what Ounsworth calls Inchthe failed democratic experiment that is the United States of AmericaInch and the supine hypocrisy of those currently in government. The first singles taken from New Fragility, the double A-side of 'Hesitating Nation' and 'Thousand Oaks', are deeply p
