Author Archives: Kevin J Elliott

London’s Clientele has been kicking around for ten years now, in that time they’ve become Britain’s foremost “blues” band. Not blues as in Black Keys, but in the specific hues their albums evoke. Suburban Light, the initial collection of singles, is the shade of royal, The Violet Hour, more aquamarine, Strange Geometry, eerie midnight blue, and now, with God Save the Clientele, it’s purely cerulean, even flashes of periwinkle add to the group’s most charming album. Throughout that catalog, they’ve always been fascinated with seasonal change, earthly environments, the natural world, and the tragic relationships that are affected by such things; in that case, God Save is a cloudless sky lazily slouching above a dramatic summer fling.

By releasing their “inner Monkees,” the carefree, but ghostly ominous lead, “Here Comes the Phantom,” resembles a more baroque “Daydream Believer.” Despite having grown musically over the past decade, telling in the complex arrangements that serve more as soft-rock backdrop than focal point, the Clientele trumps the stiff, learned, pomposity of their playing with bright, breathless, a.m. melodies. “Bookshop Cassanova,” has the feel of a Left Banke single never buried in mothballs, instead dusted off and delicately primped every year, without sacrificing its halcyon glisten.

New tricks are experimented with here as well, “The Queen of Seville” adds a bit of twang via steel guitar, “The Dance of the Hours” is a sprightly instrumental channeling Vince Guaraldi or Mike Oldfield’s playful soundtracks, and like most of God Save, “I Hope I Know You’s” contemplative and smiling melancholy, has the feeling you’re staring off into a landscape caught in infinite dusk.

Unfortunately, The Clientele’s allegiance to the late 60’s orchestral chamber pop (i.e. the Zombies, the Hollies, the Turtles) will always leave them pigeonholed as a band that is ephemeral and forgettable, a group more concerned with re-creating the past than moving forward. Paying closer attention to their evolution however, will reveal that they are making bold strokes towards a psychedelic-lite that comfortably fits in modern times.

MP3: “Bookshop Cassanova”
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A wealth of unfettered praise is about to bloom for Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania’s Lewis and Clarke if and when their Blasts of Holy Birth falls into the right hands. Parallel to the new universe of delicate, folk-based yacht-rock (see Band of Horses, Iron and Wine, Horse Feathers), but in no way equal, the album uses that world only as a foundation rather than relying on obvious hooks and more obvious instrumentation to pluck at the heartstrings. In some respects even strains of Bright Eyes surface here and there, but surely singer/songwriter Lou Rogai has experienced the overwhelming beauty of lonesome country, rather than listened to a history of lonesome country records.

Instead, Blasts of Holy Birth is a deeply personal record, crafted with a subtle hand that lends to multiple new awakenings with each new listen. The album is more a cohesive exploration into the quiet self, not a batch of songs pasted together like postcards from the road. It’s hypnotic and meditative even, blank and quixotic. There’s as much an Eastern tinge to Blasts of Holy Birth as there is an instinctive attachment to rural slowcore and the acoustic symphonic.

“Comfort Inn,” begins, in earnest, as a soft-spoken, finger-picked, near-hymnal folk, and slowly evolves into a lulling tapestry of intertwining melodies of harp, bowed strings, chimes, and pit-er-pat percussions. “Black Doves” continues towards enlightenment through its introduction of tablas, and dark tones of nothingness. And Rogai’s centerpiece, “Before it Breaks You,” takes to task combining the many strengths and mysterious hidden mazes of Holy Birth, into a ten-minute epic capable of producing both tears of remembrance and a third-eye vision, should the listener indulge enough in it’s multiple folds.

MP3: “Before It Breaks You”