THE CLIENTELE
Issue #32
God Save the Clientele
By John Everhart
Published: June 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
The Clientele have fashioned an impressive career by embracing the unlikely quotient of Galaxie 500’s minimalist drone and Love’s vaguely psychedelic chamber-pop, somehow perfect for framing songwriter Alasdair MacLean’s half-light lovelorn ruminations. They seemingly exhausted that formula on 2002’s minor masterpiece, The Violet Hour, but got some more mileage out of it on 2005’s Strange Geometry, which was buttressed by string arrangements courtesy of Louis Philippe. On this, their third proper full-length, there are new embellishments that peak through the monochromatic murk: pedal steel, keyboards, and violin. All enrich when they could have easily cluttered, subtly refining the band’s trademark sound.
The splendor here is found in these nuances. New member Mel Draisey’s violin adroitly adds dazzling John Cale–like texture to “These Days Nothing But Sunshine.” And Phillipe again impresses with his subtly effective string arrangements, nicely animating the jaunty opener “Here Comes the Phantom.” The arpeggiated breeze of “The Dance of the Hours” is yet another stylistic departure for the band, with its windswept melody conjuring early Felt, while the seesaw jangle of “Somebody Changed” is pure Fifth Dimension–era Byrds.
Levity is found on the superb “Bookshop Casanova,” as MacLean ramps up his flat, Tom Verlaine–on-valium monotone, waxing flippantly romantic as he croons licentiously, “You’ve got my name / Pick up my number / Come on down / Let’s be lovers,” over ebullient, disco-driven syncopation. “The Garden at Night” sports rough-hewn Nuggets garage sheen flourishes, with spoken-word vocals that capture the schizoid feel of the Velvet Underground’s “The Gift.”
While this record won’t change anyone’s worldview, it does tug hard at this insular band’s self-imposed boundaries. Yet at their core, these are still wistful, twilit ballads — the Clientele’s own idiosyncratic sonic version of impressionism. They’ve delivered yet another great record, one that’s as compellingly oblique as it is achingly gorgeous.
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