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"HAUNTED MELODY"
The Clientele
7' Single
POINT008
Released: 01-Oct-2002
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£2.99
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| "a blissful mix of Galaxie 500, Smiths and the Velvet Underground..." - LosingToday.com |
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Haunted Melody, Fear Of Falling |
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LosingToday.com
Read it here »
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"Don't ask me what these lads eat, I sometimes have cause to believe that packed away somewhere they have the closet from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, yet instead of passing through the vortex into a land of enchanted snow bound scenery from a fairytale kingdom, they in fact are transported to the 60's to an era were dreamy collages and softly strummed guitars are the in thing.
The Clientele produce a sound that is equal parts haunting and mesmerizing, touched by an airy spellbinding weave that entwines the senses thus captivating the soul. 'Haunted Melody' races the pulse with magical intent, a blissful mix of Galaxie 500, Smiths and the Velvet Underground. 'Fear of falling' on the flipside is all tumbling melodies, so sweetly fragile and basking in innocence you feel it could wilt in a gentle breeze.
There's enough warmth on these two tracks to melt the most frozen of hearts. What the word sublime was invented for." |
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Tangents
Read it here »
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"Another Clientele record is always a cause for celebration too, and 'Haunted Melody'/'Fear of Falling' (Pointy) is no exception. If you're familiar with the sound made by The Clientele than this is more of the same, and that's of course just fine. This single shows no great changes of direction for The Clientele, instead giving once more the feeling that they are in the process of carefully honing their sound, developing soft and subtle changes of hue and tone.
For me, it's these almost imperceptible changes from record to record that make the Clientele so special. It was the same with Felt, with whom they share this sense of organic development, and indeed with all great Pop; formula being the key of course. Of course too there's a soaking in late '60s psych-folk stylings at work in The Clientele that I find impossible to resist.
Their cover of the West Coast Experimental Band's 'Tracey Had A Hard Day Monday' gave the explicit nod, but really the whole essence of that era seems to infuse The Clientele in the most perfectly natural manner imaginable. So imagine John Hartford strumming in Golden Gate Park, or maybe more tellingly Anne Briggs chilling out with Soft Machine in Highgate Park and you'd maybe be thinking on the same wavelength as The Clientele." |
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THE CLIENTELE
Website
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The Clientele formed a long time ago in the backwoods of suburban Hampshire, playing together as kids at school, rehearsing in a thatched cottage remote from any kind of music scene, but hypnotised by the magical strangeness of Galaxie 500 and Felt, and the psych pop of Love and the Zombies. During a pub conversation the band collectively voted that it was OK to be influenced by Surrealist poetry but not OK to have any shouting or blues guitar solos. From that moment on they put their stamp on a kind of eerie, distanced pure pop, stripped to its essentials and recorded quickly to 4 track analogue tape.
These recordings were released as lovingly packaged 7 singles at the tail-end of the 90s, and compiled as the millennium ended into the debut album, Suburban Light, now hailed as one of the finest records of the decade. From the faded pop art of Suburban Light came a move into the fog with the 2nd LP, The Violet Hour, released in 2003. An attempt to create a deeper, more mysterious sound, it was an archetypal Clientele record: hypnotic, self-enclosed, meticulously creating its own world.
The Clientele re-invented their music with Strange Geometry (2005) and God Save the Clientele (2007); Brian O Shaughnessy (My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream) and Mark Nevers produced, and El Records legend Louis Philippe provided typically gorgeous string arrangements. The sound was bigger, brighter, and clearer, MacLean s ringing, classically-influenced guitar style and James Hornsey s melodic bass combining to create a different kind of depth and atmosphere for the newly sparkling songs, which now came complete with crossover appeal; incongruously, one of them even featured in the Keanu Reeves / Sandra Bullock weepie, "The Lake House".
Bonfires on the Heath (2009) is in a sense a return to the Clienteles roots; the dreamlike suburban landscapes first encountered in the early singles, their trippy sense of menace stronger now. Back in London, theyve drawn on older traditions of English folk, which exist here side-by-side with the band's more familiar bossa and pop elements, creating a timeless eeriness. Its often said the best bands create their own sound; the Clientele have gone one further and created an entire world.
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