Clap Your Hands Say Yeah with the Fembots (The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, September 3)

Within the span of an hour, two very different acts took the Horseshoe stage. The first, critically acclaimed locals on a reputable Canadian indie label, were just days away from releasing their third disc - a deservedly anticipated offering that focuses as heavily on Toronto as any release in recent memory. The second, based out of Brooklyn, have no label deal whatsoever, have yet to release their debut album in Canada, and were completely unknown by even the most eager trend-seekers three months ago.

Naturally, it was the latter that the scenesters were there to see on Saturday. Welcome to the Pitchfork generation.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are an indie kid's wet dream. With the band plugging away on its own, its self-released album was handed an out-of-the-blue rave review by the Internet's mecca of music snobbery (Pitchfork Media is its full name, for the uninitiated). Suddenly, the sparsely distributed disc became a must-have item, CYHSY's shows were packed, and they were gracing every alternative newspaper and magazine on the continent - all without an ad budget, a publicist, or even a distributor to make their disc available in most cities.

It seems absurd to suggest, in the absence of comforts that even most indie bands take for granted, that there is something manufactured about CYHSY. But in an era in which the online media and blogosphere are effectively creating hot acts from one minute to the next, the gap between the band's hype and what it actually delivers leaves one with that distinct impression.

CYHSY is tight, energetic and thoroughly professional. It is also, at the risk of infuriating those heralding it as the Second Coming, a tad unoriginal. Shamelessly aping the Talking Heads, particularly in front man Alec Ounsworth's wavery vocals, its self-titled debut has slotted it - for the time being, at least - into the category of bands that do justice to their influences, but do little to build on them. It is not, in other words, the Arcade Fire II, which is what the entire indie music community is apparently willing it to be.

Live, the effect is much the same. In a 50-minute set that would have been shorter if not for a break to repair a broken guitar string, CYHSY reproduced much of its disc flawlessly, elicited a gleeful response to its best-known (and probably best) song, My Yellow Country Teeth, and showcased an unreleased tune at the end of its main set. But flawlessly though his vocals may have been delivered, there was something world-weary and vaguely cynical about Ounsworth's stage presence. The rest of the band, intermittent banter notwithstanding, seemed mostly peripheral. And though much of the paying public would clearly disagree, there seemed a curious soullessness about the whole thing - especially next to the band that opened.

Over the chatter from scenesters huddled at the back of the room, the Fembots delivered a performance that deserved to be met with the same rapturous response that greeted CYHSY's arrival. Focusing heavily on their terrific new disc, The City, the Torontonian sextet - with the core of Dave MacKinnon and Brian Poirer joined by four others, including violinist Julie Penner - delivered an enchanting brand of country-rock that should have had the place howling for an encore.

It didn't, of course. For that to happen, at least with this particular crowd, the Fembots will need to get Pitchfork to pay some attention to them.