|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
I Had To Say This, Monday's Rain |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| » |
Time Out New York
|
| "The best pop band to emerge from the UK since Belle & Sebastian releases seven-inch number four. 'I Had To Say This' is a sweeping piece of - as the Grammy categorizers like to call it - traditional pop with a Bacharachian air added to The Clientele's perfect blend of gentle 1960s baroque pop (think Velvet Underground's third, Nick Drake, Love, Felt, Galaxie 500). The sleepy melancholic B-side is equally stunning, and even the bittersweet lyric "My friends say I'm wasting all my time" can't keep the song from feeling easy and hopeful. The Clientele sound like falling in love in the rain." |
|
|
|
| » |
Record Collector
|
| "The A-side begins like a laid back Velvet Underground tune, but with the singer from Mercury Rev. The production is unique the drums are crisp and the guitars pick delicately at each note. Towards the end, backwards loops of noise wash in, and you are reminded of 60s garage music, or even psychedelia. A lilting vocal melody laces the whole tune, but the song is over far too quickly. The B-side, 'Monday's Rain', further displays the band's fine lyrical ability, and is even more relaxed." |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE CLIENTELE
Website
»
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.
|
|
|
