The Clientele - Best Band Since The Smiths

wait, they said there's a new LP on the way?? insert happy face gif

They did - said (from the stage) that they’d signed a contract with Merge for a new one.

jimbeaux listen to Strange Geometry

fantastic news!

whoop! whoop!

They really were on sparkling form friday, although a couple of the songs from the last lp had a slightly busked quality. The mix was crystalline. So glad they are a going concern and wished i'd bought one of the lyric books. Glad i didn't but one of the tiny suburban daylight t shirts.

v. excited about a new album!

new tune out!

OMG new double album in July!

Just the 19 songs on the new album then!

it's clearly going to be their Tusk

It's nice, though I have a very minor pet peeve regarding excessive vocal melodies applied to simple words like "blue" ("blue over bluuu-u-u-uuu-u-u-uuue")

we can have good things at least some of the time

If that's a way of saying "can't you just let us enjoy this" please let me reiterate how minor and inconsequential my criticism of that detail is meant to be. I'm very excited the album is finally announced!

wait until you hear the cover of Doin' the Do that closes the album

xpost i'm just excited for the album. my comment was more global. it's a good news monday on a lot of fronts.

How do you capture lyrics? A pen? A smart phone app?
It always used to be a pen and a piece of paper. I’ve now changed to notes on iphone. Tragically, I also use a Trello board to swap things around and see if they look different in a different order. Quite often ideas come from quotes or images from books I read, so I take photos of the page too.

They’re coming back to The Chapel in SF this summer. More good things.

yeah looking forward to that. I'm really happy this band has soldiered on and continues to find some way to tour outside the UK without ever becoming huge.

I'm gonna try and hit up the Philly and DC shows!

Supreme Clientele would be a cool mashup record

weirdly, there is kind of a hip hop breakdown on this new record ... and it's good!

not totally feeling new song tbh - a little bit the drums, a little bit the recurring guitar “sample” at the top - cool that they are playing with the sound, just didn’t quite gel for me in this instance

xxp

*Alasdair MacLean voice* “heavy rain fucked my kicks up…”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP8ut6vBQuw
live from 2000 "And the Grass Won't Pay No Mind" (Neil Diamond)

they certainly make this sound like a clientele tune

new one!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrG7DghQby8

has a genuinely weird Beatles "White Album" kinda thing going on

seems like it'll be an interesting trip!

yeah, doesn't sound like more of the same... which is cool!

Music for the Age of Miracles was both a surprise and a classic, so I'm quite happy for them to follow it up with a sprawling experimental double album... just bought tickets for the Philly and DC shows!

another new track!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_r9NgWnPYo

Thats really lovely, feeling much better about the lp now.

not totally feeling new song tbh - a little bit the drums, a little bit the recurring guitar “sample” at the top - cool that they are playing with the sound, just didn’t quite gel for me in this instance

― meat and two vdgg (emsworth), Tuesday, 25 April 2023 23:03 (two months ago) link

Revisiting that first new track again and yeah I think it just comes across as a bit too stiff overall. Both the instrumentation and forcing "blue over blue" into that vocal melody contribute to that feeling for me. HOWEVER I don't necessarily dislike it, I guess I'm just trying to analyze why it was feeling a little off.

The Clientele is best when they sound effortless and it did not feel that way. This is also why I was a little turned off by the overstuffed production on the last album.

I'm definitely warming to Dying in may, though still getting a distinct Noel's-posh-cousin-does-a-trip vibration from it that i'm not sure what do with.

Blue over blue is nice enough but has a couple of tics that bother me (the farting fuzz, the baroque breakdown), its unusual for the first taste of a new clientele lp to be anything but flat out perfection, but i'm sure it will be fine in context. Now very excited to hear the record and on board for any eeriness / polite tinkering / scorched earth sonic terrorism in might entail.

out friday! :D

there's... a podcast?
https://shows.acast.com/the-clientele-podcast

We got a promo of the new album in at work which I've played a couple of times. I'm really not feeling it sadly. There's some songs that just don't work (including the first two singles). The nicer more typical Clientele songs just feel like retreads of what they've done before.

I'll stick with it because I love these guys, but my first impression is that this is easily their weakest album and I doubt I'll pick it up.

just came in the mail! haven't listened yet

First spin and I'm liking this a LOT more than the last one.

now that's what I want to hear!

the video was never posted was it... it's fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-YpCcy05OA

on first listen this is brilliant! everything I didn't know I needed

the drums!

never thought I'd get radiohead vibes from a clientele record haha

this could be a breakthrough album for them

haha I could live without the beats and any echoes of r*******d but I do really like it on first play and can now happily file my mild dislike of blue over blue as an irrelevance. This isn't going to do their reputation for none more cut glass Englishness any good is it...

worth the wait for Chalk Flowers alone

Liking this on first listen. Idly speculating that it takes a period of months/years to know whether an album with skits/interludes properly gels.

All the positive reactions are encouraging me to spend more time with this. The last album was so instant and is one of my favourite albums of theirs. I'm hoping this one grows on me.

It's funny because the last album ended up being my least favorite! It felt like a (relative) lack of inspired musical ideas with overly busy production garnish to compensate. Like just-OK ice cream base layer with overly rich syrup and sprinkles etc. Ends up being a "bit much" and sort of underwhelming all at once. I'm trying too hard to describe it perfectly and in doing so makes me sound more negative than intended probably... because I still like it! Just not as much as most of the rest of the discography.

New one sounded really cohesive - ambitious but in a way that felt more successful and immersive to me! Really into it.

xpost i my initial view on the last album was relatively negative but after listening to it a few more times over the years i came round to really loving about half the songs.

looking forward to spending time with the new one.

Age of Miracles had like four top-tier Clientele songs... Everyone You Meet, Lunar Days, Falling Asleep, Age of Miracles! Maybe it's time to poll the Clientele?

So far this one seems like a sprawling version of the Ariadne EP (which has the earlier, superior version of Impossible)

I was prepared to hate this based on one of the advance singles and some of what you all were posting (even the complimentary comments had me a little worried). But actually it was pretty good on first listen. It meanders in a way I don't really think other Clientele albums do and I'm not sure how that will feel after multiple listens, but at least the first time through I enjoyed the wax/wane pacing.

Enjoying this also (from a similarly skeptical starting point)… reminds me of Performance somehow - viz hippy-era eclecticism but also the sense of a big rambling house full of different vibes… man…

the last album ended up being my least favorite! It felt like a (relative) lack of inspired musical ideas with overly busy production garnish to compensate

this is too harsh

but I agree with the sentiment