On their third full-length, The Clientele are setting free their inner Monkees with a lovely blend of Big Star twisted powerpop, Byrdsian country achin', and flashes of The Beatles at their most joyful and upbeat. The ghosts, half-light, and uncertainties remain, but included in this music is a newfound optimism. With the addition of piano and violin, the band paints from a broader palette, adding splashes of pedal steel and slide guitar to their already lush songs. Their most accomplished and triumphant record. Recorded in Nashville with Mark Nevers (Lambchop, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Calexico, Silver Jews).
Review by Tim Sendra
The Clientele's third full-length LP finds the band riding the wave of beauty and inspiration that made Strange Geometry one of the most impressive records of 2005. As is their style, the group has made no radical changes to their sound or approach; Alasdair MacLean still sings in a heartbreakingly honest and sweet voice, the band is as restrained and thoughtful as ever, the strings that dot the songs like floating tufts of cotton candy are again arranged by Louis Philippe, and the songs are predictably haunting and heartwarming. Even the changes the group made haven't really changed anything. God Save the Clientele was recorded in Nashville with Lambchop's Mark Nevers at the helm, and with help from Autumn Defense member Pat Sansone, one might expect a more Americanized sound, but with the exception of a pedal steel here and there, the band still magically conjures up autumn walks through rainy London back streets or, even better, languid late summer days spent drifting through the English countryside. Nevers does get a slightly cleaner sound, cutting the reverb down noticeably, but without any ill effects. The addition of Mel Draisey on keyboards, violin, and backing vocals hasn't changed much for the group either, as she's only on about half the tracks and her contributions are pleasingly subtle. Apart from the talk of changes or lack thereof, what you get with God Save the Clientele is a stunning batch of songs that will break your heart, pump it back full of life, and send you off to dreamland with a warm feeling filling your soul. From bouncy summery tunes like "Here Comes the Phantom," which opens the album with a burst of joy, to sleepy ballads (the George Harrison-esque "Isn't Life Strange") and trademark midtempo charmers like "From Brighton Beach to Santa Monica," the band has never been as consistently wonderful as on this album. They also carry over the strong sense of dynamics from Strange Geometry and make sure to balance moods and tempos throughout the album; for every languid ballad like "The Queen of Seville" or the achingly beautiful "No Dreams Last Night," there's an uptempo track like "The Garden at Night" (a wild rocker that sounds like the soundtrack to a scene in a '60s film where the straight-laced couple wanders into a hip nightclub by mistake and is accosted by swirling music and a trippy light show) or the more sedate but still rocking "Bookshop Casanova" to match. Every song on the album is near perfect and would sound just right on a mix CD designed to win a heart, cheer up a friend, or simply make you glad to be alive. God Save the Clientele is another stroke of magic from a band that has few peers in delivering music that can make or break your heart with a vocal inflection, swath of strings, or gentle arpeggio, music that can devastate you in one breath and lift you to the heavens with the next. The Clientele are that good and this album ranks with their finest moments.
The Clientele
God Save the Clientele
[Merge; 2007]
Rating: 8.3
It's a little difficult not to hum the melody to "Daydream Believer" during the opening of "Here Comes the Phantom", the first track from the Clientele's third full-length album. The chords bump against those of the Monkees classic without mimicking them precisely; it's not what is played that sounds so familiar, but how, as the piano moves with a whimsical bounce that evokes someone dancing in a brightly-lit studio with walls the color of a television's test pattern. And when Alasdair MacLean begins to sing, it's like all the rain that fell during the first 50 or so songs the Clientele recorded has finally given way to sunlight: "April in my mind, but I can't sleep/ So I took a walk around the trees/ And what did I see?/ Summer waits in the leaves/ As lovely as I've ever known." We hear of cops picking flowers while walking their beats and a heart that plays like a violin. We've been introduced to a new Clientele world. But it's not all golden shafts of light: "Happiness just comes and goes," MacLean sings to finish out the verse.
Listening to God Save the Clientele I keep thinking of how, through their first two albums, various EPs, and the godlike singles collection Suburban Light, the Clientele seemed defined by a certain kind of thoughtful stasis. They were the band that to casual observers sounded the same from track to track, employing a handful of production tricks and a slightly larger handful of lyrical themes to articulate a rich and complex world informed by magical realism, memory, and the ache of nostalgia. For good or ill, this uniformity seems to be slipping away. God Save the Clientele sounds like the work of the same band, but it shows them in a new, brighter light, broadened in both sound and outlook. In terms of sonics and tunes, these changes are welcome and logical, expanding upon the sound with which they made their name without sacrificing intimacy or risking coming across overcooked.
Most of these tracks were recorded by Lambchop's Mark Nevers at his Beech House studio in Nashville. Brian O'Shaughnessy, who worked on Strange Geometry, also recorded two numbers and mixed the lot. String arrangements-- and there are lots of them-- are again by Louis Philippe, the indie pop veteran with the golden ears. Suffice to say, God Save sounds warm, balanced, and absolutely gorgeous. Nevers' commitment to analog and his stated desire to recapture the depth of field of the finest recordings from the 1970s are matched well to the Clientele's classicist aesthetic. The range of guitar tones, along with tasteful use of orchestrations, piano, and pedal steel, has led to an album that sounds absurdly expensive and lush for an indie release.
The band's easy melodicism is intact. "Here Comes the Phantom" and "Bookshop Casanova" are the sort of peppy, tuneful pop that would have sounded odd coming from the Clientele five years ago. The latter has been remarked upon for its Beatles-referencing lyrics ("You've got my name/ Pick up my number/ Come on, darling/ Let's be lovers") and an overall mood that brings to mind the Fab Four (seems like there's probably a writer of paperbacks lurking somewhere in this particular shop). "Winter on Victoria Street" sounds like a Clientele title of old but it's another swinging track that, like "Bookshop", has lyrics that work the edge between longing and lust ("Watching a movie and getting bored/ Trying to get up with the girl next door"). "The Queen of Seville" might be the most beautiful ballad the band has recorded, with a Erik Satie-like piano line, acoustic guitar picking that oozes melancholy, and a radiant pedal steel that sounds dialed in from a rain-soaked countrypolitan dream.
Balancing its sonic pleasures, God Save is more difficult to get a handle on lyrically. Which is ironic, considering that MacLean's words now seem simpler, more direct, and ultimately more grounded in pop tradition. On early singles like "Reflections After Jane", MacLean's viewpoint seemed utterly strange and simultaneously familiar, like he was pointing out things we'd all noticed but no one had bothered to articulate. "On the bridge the workers pass in threes and fours and fives," he sang back then, and you could see those dudes in your mind, striding along with their lunch pails, and you knew it was important even if you weren't quite sure why. The instantly evocative couplets here are harder to find, and there are more references to a larger, more generalized big picture. Another of the album's stronger songs is titled "From Brighton Beach to Santa Monica", which is a whole lot of real estate, even if the verses are actually quite specific. ("Voices in the park following us down to Vincent Street/ Ghosts inside the yard, rattling their balls and chains.")
"The Dance of the Hours" sets prose to music, and the quickly whispered words are impossible to catch on record. Fortunately, they're included in the album's liners. The song's tale is quintessential Clientele, telling of a tiny knight found in a back garden by a child. It's the kind of story that could be covered in 10 words but MacLean takes a couple hundred anyway, teasing out every detail of the small figure's appearance ("I realize now that his delicate frame could only have been nourished by medieval foods: turnips, blood sausage, perhaps songbirds roasted in a thin, toxic sauce of mercury") and circumstances. That feeling of a banal moment being imbued with so much potential significance, if only one would only take the time to comb through it, is what the Clientele's music captures at its very best. God Save may not get there quite as often as Strange Geometry or the songs collected on Suburban Light, but it does so much else right such potential shortcomings are easy to set aside.
-Mark Richardson, May 10, 2007
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