Londoners The Clientele has been at it for a long while now, 32 years, in fact, with a lengthy hiatus consuming most of the last decade. On July 28, they release their ninth full-length album, a double set that finds vocalist-guitarist Alasdair MacLean, bassist James Hornsey, and drummer Mark Keen expanding on their signature ethereal indie pop. It’s ambition that pays off in a big way, as I Am Not There Anymore is stylistically and instrumentally broad, yet focused and unstrained. Distinct from anything they’ve released before, it still connects like an album by The Clientele.
Since announcing their presence in 1998 with Suburban Light (they’d been at it since 1991, with recordings from this formative period documented on the 2005 compilation It’s Art, Dad), The Clientele hasn’t exactly pulled a Ramones move and kept to the same rigid template, but they have honed an approach that’s pretty easily recognizable.
Branching out can be invigorating for artist and listener alike, but it can also prove disastrous (as in, “hope you enjoy our new direction.”). I Am Not There Anymore features electronic beats, tapes, bouzouki, celesta, and Mellotron, so the potential for calamity was extant. But hey, the use of Mellotron makes total sense, as a baroque sensibility fits and isn’t foreign to The Clientele’s general thrust.
However, there’s a full-on string section plus trumpet heard on I Am Not There Anymore, playing string and horn arrangements from MacLean and Keen, save for one track, “Through the Roses,” which was arranged by Hornsey and Alicia Macanás. The latter also co-wrote and sings on “Fables of the Silverlink,” the eight-minute opening track that combines heavy catgut action with those electronic rhythms before settling into that familiar Clientele sound. But the deep strings and electro beats do return, along with Macanás’ vocals.
Included in the record’s ample (but not overabundant) runtime are a handful of short passages, most with the title “Radial,” and most featuring piano or celesta. An exception is “Segue 4 (iv),” a very brief collage of a field recording with quacking ducks and choral singing. Heard individually, these pieces unwind and dissipate without leaving much of an impression, but absorbed as part of the record’s progression, they deepen the whole.
With a big loping beat, “Golden Eye Mantra” initially comes on like folktronica (bringing Beta Band to mind), but when the stings and MacLean’s vocals come in, everything is on point (however, the chant-rap in the back end is a bit of a surprise). “Segue 4 (iv)” follows and then comes the baroque beauty, crisp rhythms and ethereal voicings of “Lady Grey,” which hits as one of I Am Not There Anymore’s gems.
“Dying in May” is lively enough to get a conga line rolling, but the surges and streams of Mellotron give the track a swirly neo-psych quality that’s quite welcome. “Conjuring Summer In” delivers another twist, bring together spoken word excerpts of work from David Thompson, Gaby Wood, Rudyard Kipling, John Berger, and Vernon Scannell with beats, strings, and piano. But then after “Radial C (Nocturne for Three Trees),” the decidedly poppy “Blue Over Blue” arrives right on time complete with trumpets and strings, both pizzicato and arco.
“Claire’s Not Real” toys with a subtle bossa pop feel but then opts for string lushness as MacLean holds court with some of that terrific vocal phrasing. Next, “My Childhood” drops more spoken word into a avant-chamber classical milieu, ahead of the gorgeously melancholic and lyrically packed “Chalk Flowers.” It and “Hey Siobhan” should please long time Clientele fans, and if you’re sensing a pattern here, it’s a good one. If the set consistently ventures outward, the established Clientele sound is never absent for long.
The record’s final side hits that Clientele core and stays there for a while, beginning with the exquisite chamber pop double whammy of “Stems of Anise” and “Through the Roses,” the latter dishing some of the sweetest string lushness this side of Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers. “I Dreamed of You, Maria” is more about chiming guitars, though a forlorn trumpet is a superb addition to the scheme.
“The Village Is Always on Fire” flirts with an almost trip-hoppy atmosphere in the best way possible, but inevitably, the strings reemerge to usher in the album’s close. As The Clientele’s first album in six years, I Am Not There Anymore’s ambitiousness could’ve backfired pretty severely, but the group rises to a high plateau early and doesn’t falter, and in the process they return to action with one of the year’s best albums.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
