|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
I Had To Say This, Rain, Reflections After Jane, We Could Walk Together, Monday's Rain, Joseph Cornell, An Hour Before The Light, (I Want You) More Than Ever, Saturday, Five Day Morning, Bicycles, As Night Is Falling, Lace Wings |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| » |
Melody Maker
|
| "Lou Reeds ballads and Galaxie 500's hymnal atmospherics merged with huge tuneful grandeur"
|
|
|
|
| » |
Betty Clarke - The Guardian, UK
|
| "Imagine Super-8 footage of Arthur Lee of Love waltzing down Haight-Ashbury, while a song evoking lazy summers plays in the background. Now you've got a glimpse into the world of The Clientele. But while the inspiration for these colourful sounds seems American, 'Suburban Light' is wrapped in a Made in Britain T-shirt, indulging in national preoccupations and everyday visions. The dreamy vocals of Alasdair Maclean swoop through sweetly reflective lyrics while guitars jangle and drums skip joyfully. "Monday's Rain" is just beautiful and the mellow "Joseph Cornell" is a breath of fresh air."
|
|
|
|
| » |
Siobhan Grogan - NME, UK
|
"Some records are destined for obscurity before they've even had the chance to be heard. Their ambition is whispered, their glory muted. They sound as if they'd crumple instantly under the pressure of any success.
It might only be their first album, but The Clientele already meet the requirements of this category perfectly. Though the trio formed in London, they've been touring America's East Coast and releasing singles on every label going. The record's cover is suitably nondescript: a blurred photograph and standard typed lettering. The band's name gives nothing away, and then there are the song titles: "Rain", "Monday's Rain" and "Bicycles". The Clientele haven't been called the new Belle & Sebastian for nothing.
Indeed, 'Suburban Light' is as delicate, and at times as forlorn, as the Scottish indie kings. But thankfully, it's never as twee. Singer Alasdair Maclean sounds too throaty and, well, sturdy for that, weaving through the gentlest plucking guitars and chiming cymbals like a bizarre hybrid of Nico and Nick Drake. It's spaced-out, hypnotic loveliness that could feasibly have been recorded at any time in the last 30 years. The sort of record that a few devotees will treasure. And that everyone else will, sadly, ignore." |
|
|
|
| » |
James McNair - Mojo, UK
|
| "Though parts of it sound as if they were recorded in Arthur Lee's broom cupboard, 'Suburban Light' has all the bleary-eyed beauty of a lazy Sunday morning, singer Alasdair Maclean coming on like Al Stewart on ketamine. Key influences include Galaxie 500 and Nick Drake, and the spare, crisp songs often take shape as slowly as icicles.
You should also rifle your adjective bag for 'somnambulant', 'cinematic' and 'woozy', note that one song namechecks the surrealist Joseph Cornell, and ensure that inaugural listens happen first thing in the morning or last thing at night. The Clientele sound best when you're busy doing nothing, and in a world crass enough to try and sell us Jamie Oliver's 'Music To Cook By', why bother changing out of you PJs. Bookish types with Super-8 projectors and an odd Belle and Sebastian EP will be well served." |
|
|
|
| » |
Track & Field, UK
|
| "In a world where being 'Sixties influenced' means getting a shaggy haircut, name checking The Beatles and copying some Small Faces riffs, The Clientele come as a breath of fresh air. Their first album, a 'story so far' collection of long deleted singles, compilation tracks and new material, is entirely in keeping with the spirit of that most imitated of decades, but never stoops to the lazy plagiarism and heritage industry 'cool' we have come to associate with it.
Above all what gives The Clientele their distinctive edge is Alasdair Maclean's voice. Lovelorn and at times desolate, it sounds as if it is being picked up through a transistor radio after being beamed out from another time, giving the album a gorgeous dream-like quality. Many of the tracks communicate a particularly English form of quiet romanticism and resignation that has an almost folky edge, at times even echoing the delicacy of Nick Drake.
Through songs so fragile they feel as if they would disintegrate at a touch, The Clientele present you with a timeless world of rain blurred windows and 'silent dark October lanes' in which love is always just out of reach. An unmissable autumnal treat." |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
