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"STRANGE GEOMETRY CD"
The Clientele
CD Album
Point 017cd
Released: 05-Sep-2005
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£9.99
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| "One of todays most consistently wonderful bands has kept up its long winning streak..." - pitchforkmedia.com |
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Since K Got Over Me, (I Can't Seem) To Make You Mine, My Own Face Inside The Trees, K, E.M.P.T.Y., When I Came Home from The Party, Geometry Of Lawns, Spirit, Impossible, Step Into The Light, Losing Haringey, Six Of Spades |
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Uncut
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"Beguiling third album from the discreetly uncanny north London trio, taking a turn from Galaxie 500 to The Zombies, as the whispery reverb of their twilight torch songs is elegantly embellished with strings from Louis Philippe."
4 stars |
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Q Magazine
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"Formed in Hampshire in 1997, The Clientele could be accused of imagining they live on the West Coast in the '60s. Yet with repeated listens, the trio's third album grows in stature, full of intriguing neo-psychedelia. It's the lovely spoken-word drowse of Losing Haringey, however, that shows them at their best proof you don't have to live in California to write enchanting urban poetry."
3 stars |
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The Guardian
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"Enclosed in the dilapidated glamour of Bush Hall, with its twinkling chandeliers and Victorian music hall charm, it's easy to feel transported to another time. It's not a bawdy turn-of-the-century vaudeville night the Clientele take us back to, however, but the shimmering, psychedelic pop days of the 1960s.
Their ineffably pretty indie sound draws on classic bands such as Love and the Kinks; in fact, Since K Got Over Me sounds unashamedly similiar to Waterloos Sunset. It also borrows heavily from the neighbouring decade, with deep swathes of 1970s country rock thrown about in the semi-darkness.
There's no stage lighting; instead, the Clientele are lit only by some rather ostentatious projections behind them, which start off with images of aeroplanes and end up with moody black-and-white shots of Parisian couples looking gorgeous and intelligent. Admittedly, this peculiar arrangement draws the crowd in, heightening the music's intimacy.
Aside from his swooping vocals, singer and guitarist Alasdair Maclean barely utters a word all night. But towards the end the house lights come up a smidgen and he introduces a shy-looking Spanish girl to the stage. Her job is simply to mutter the lyrics of the sweet, folky bossa nova number Losing Haringey in a sexy accent. Something she does splendidly, bringing a touch of exoticism to a song about a grey, and essentially quite glum, north London borough."
4 stars |
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soundsxp.com
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| "The Clientele have been making small but beautifully formed ripples in the English indie ocean for quite a few years now and Strange Geometry, their second album proper, and strongest album to date, is likely to enlarge those ripples, like the kind that have seen them sign a lucrative publishing deal over the pond in America.
There's a central theme of melancholy and loneliness that runs throughout the album and this mysterious recurring 'K' figure seems to have an influence on this tone. Songs such as E.M.P.T.Y reflect this mood: "I get in so tired, to the saws & bows that spell out E.M.P.T.Y." They wrap this melancholy in a warm blanket of Love, Zombies and Felt infected shimmering guitar pop.
Singer/guitarist Alasdair MacLean has explained that Strange Geometry is about creating atmospheres and has stated that part of their inspiration comes from "the person who wanders around with no object other than to soak up atmospheres and symbols." This would explain the apparent isolation throughout but also hints at the origins of the album title where shapes and objects define surroundings and alter moods. 'Geometry of Lawns' represents this with the line, "Leaving came to us just like a song, a dull geometry of lawns."
A fair few songs on the album are augmented by a string quartet arranged by the French composer Louis Philippe. This adds a haunting 1940s texture to the overall mood of the album and offsets the 60s sunshine pop tones rather effectively creating a fresh and modern take on the past, like Hal and The Magic Numbers have been attempting.
After repeated listens, Strange Geometry really gets under your skin and you'll wonder how you've managed without its lovely atmospheric tones. It is a most rewarding album full of impressionistic character."
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Nuts Magazine
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| "London band who seem to have been transported direct from '60s LA — minus the mop-top hair and ridiculous trousers. Mellow and melodic psychedelic folk rock." |
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pitchfork
Read it here »
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"When I was in high school a friend drove a 1970 Impala that his gearhead dad had kept garaged for years. The radio was AM-only, and as luck would have it, reception was poor and the only station it could pull was Lansing, Mich.'s version of the "Golden Oldies" format. Oldies, yes, these were the songs to hear in this car. Tooling through the streets while listening to pop singles from the late 1950s and early '60s through that factory-original system, the production of the era made perfect sense. Songs like the Flamingos' "I Only Have Eyes for You" or the Association's "The Time it Is Today", with all their lush reverb, opened up the single in-dash speaker and kept us in the middle of the music as if it was Dolby 5.1. Those producers knew exactly what they were doing.
Reverb gives the illusion of immersion, and immersion is what the Clientele is all about. Singer and guitarist Alasdair Maclean writes songs that work like songs are supposed to, but I've no desire to hear them covered by another artist. Clientele songs are bound tightly to the performance and production; to separate them would destroy the effect. Still, the band's signature sonic trick-- laying a thick coating of reverb Maclean's voice in tribute to the AM radio production of the '60s-- has in a sense been isolating; such a relentless stylization is bound to turn away some people.
There's a subtle shift in that regard here on Strange Geometry, the Clientele's second full-length. The reverb is toned down considerably, strings have been added (courtesy of Louis Philippe), and the album as a whole is more direct and focused. This clarity foregrounds Maclean's songwriting talent, a poetic ear tuned into a more surreal world, with darker images bumping against the bucolic scenes of records past. The music retains its easy tunefulness, but inside many of the songs lurks a desperation that seems new to the Clientele world. "Crowds pulled you away, through the ribbons and the rain, and the ivy coiled around my hands" in "(I Can't Seem To) Make You Mine". And then on the catchy mid-tempo "E.M.P.T.Y.", Maclean sings, "Driving west, now half past five/ My skin is cut, my hands are knives."
On previous Clientele records loneliness and romantic longing led to a hyper-aware state of quiet contemplation; here there's a vague suggestion of underlying violence. "The crowd" is mentioned throughout Strange Geometry but the narrator never seems part of it. Instead he wanders the streets seeing things--lifeless bodies in doorways, his own face inside trees-- that may or may not be there. Passages of blissed-out musical haiku like Suburban Light's "6 am Morningside" or The Violet Hour's "Haunted Melody" are nowhere to be found.
It's not right to play up the differences too much, though; this is in most respects a classically "Clientele" record. The primary differences can be found by comparing the version of "Impossible" from last year's Ariadne EP with the one released here. On the former, Maclean's voice sounds like it's been bounced off the ionosphere an ocean away, and the band's instruments sound pinched and aged. The Strange Geometry version begins with a stately string arrangement as a lead-in to a much meatier sound, while sticking with the same basic arrangement. The slight nods to accessibility and the decreased stylization might disappoint some of the faithful at first, but Strange Geometry grows more appealing with repeated listening. On the whole, Strange Geometry does a better job than The Violet Hour translating the Clientele's aesthetic, which lends itself easily to the single or EP, to the demands of a full-length record. One of today's most consistently wonderful bands has kept up its long winning streak."
-Mark Richardson, October 14, 2005
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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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