Clearlake: C/D?

Worst bit about last night: What is it about the sound at the Garage? Are they so used to horrible metal bands that they just automatically mix the guitars higher than everything else? I couldn't hear the bass or the keyboards - and the keyboards are some of the best bits of Clearlake.

I enjoyed the show because I love Clearlake, but it was painful at points. A brilliant performance marred by a cockfarming venue. :-(

I kept looking out for people who might be ilxors. I thought he was called Simon but maybe that's the other guitarist.

clearlake: I downloaded Cedars ages ago and was really disappointed. Then three days ago I was cleaning up and found an unmarked CD, popped it in, and loved it. coudln't figure out what it was, went back through my mp3s, and realized it was Cedars! Been listening to it for two days. For some reason it made a bad first impression, maybe the Cocteaus connection made me expect something else. But this record is good.

a sleeper classic for 2003?

does anybody else hear a connection to the cure perhaps? something about the mix of woe and energy...
m.

Perhaps the self-conciously and conspicuously English/Blur vibe was detrimental at a time when when Radiohead's bizarre star was in its ascendency. Indeed, this may well have hampered their chances of hitting corporate-indie pay-dirt (which presumably was/is the plan).

Perhaps they simply came across as utter cockfarmers in their interviews, I really couldn't say. That doesn't affect your chances of success these days does it?

Re Singing In Cut-Glass English Middle-Class Accents - isn't this Eno's idea?

what's it like yancey? how d'you rate the other stuff?

dude, totally fucking otm!

Yes, they are extremely good at what they do, and in retrospect it's a shame that the Franz/Libs NME-sponsored haircut-indie aesthetic picked up the hype when these boys always had the cool tunes and the lush atmospherics, not to mention the all important skinny hips and good-old fashioned self-loathing lyrics as noted above. And an ex-Cocteau producing ;)

the nme was all over their arses when lido came out. mark beaumont was creaming his pants over them (if anyone believes a word he says), and the eds let him. for pages an pages. different with cedars ... when that came out they couldn't give a fuck. i doubt they'll be any different with amber ... yeh i know you weren't really referring specifically to the nme but with a band like this the nme's importantish. fwiw i heart amber , but it took me a good 7 or 8 listens to pick up on all the cadences and refs and shit, and to get to the er implicated levels (ok, it is not such a complicated record, but to dismiss it on first listen would be doing the band and yourself a disservice: it's deceptive. praps specifically because of, rather than despite of, the simplicity).

i sort of predict and fear that they'll be one of these bands everyone namechecks in about 15/20+ years' time, when it's too late and they're all running b&bs in seaford or sth. their songwriting's superficially simplistic lyrically but the more you dig the more you win. awesome light and shade stuff going on throughout all their albums.

saw 'em at the borderline a couple of weeks back and omg it was great to have them back and everything and the new songs sounded wonderful (to the extent that i couldn't emotionally differentiate between new songs and old ones) but i miss the fervour of the old fans.

num i am gonna go listen to amber now.

also the first single is called 'good clean fun' (actually poss already out) and it sounds to me like dandys pre-courtney t-t-irritating-electronic-drum-playing-crap which is obv a great thing.

Another remix (not the Caribou one)of Good Clean Fun

I have a list on my desk of albums I need to get. bah. I never get any.

then my credit card bill turns up :(

yeah i know, i'm clueless..

not at all impressed by this stooges channeled thru aerosmith sound

Would it be remarkably unfashionable of me to bring these guys up at this point? I like them.

I used to like them, too. Got bored of them quickly I guess. I guess it was the first album I had. I didn't know they were still recording.

Bought and loved first album, saw them on tour at the time, didn't listen to anything after, haven't heard them for years. Lyrics on first album waaaaaaaaaaay too close to home for anything other than wallowing listening.

NV's first sentence = ditto me except for thinking their second album was pretty great at the time and certainly slept on

This thread makes me kind of want to listen to the second, I might track it down.

second is ok.. diminishing returns as you progress through their catalogue though

I'd hang with that tbh (maybe bumping the second album up a bit) but there's plenty of good stuff even on the third album ("No Kind Of Life", "You Can't Have Me", "Widescreen" and maybe a couple more). The penultimate tracks on the last two albums are pretty much the strongest songs on those respective albums; if anything, this band needed to blow up a little more. "Treat Yourself With Kindness" is *awesome*. Second-best track on that album is the one where they go almost as far with the sonics ("Come Into The Darkness").

First album is thoroughly excellent imo. Terrifyingly consistent with the classic tunes, its willingness to experiment doesn't once detract from the strength of the songs.

Actually wtf am I talking about, "Almost The Same" is a fantastic little opener

Never heard the first album, but I love "Cedars," an album so thoroughly and convincingly pessimistic that its cheery opening track sounds like an ironic pisstake, and the redemptive closing one-two punch at the end actually feels earned.

Not too into the third record barring the great opener. These guys ever coming back?

decided that Lido is kind of the ultimate British indie record

Heh, just thinking about these lads lately. As much as I dig "Lido", it's the power and energy of "Cedars" that does it for me.

it's Lido season (for the next five months)

Cedars is a longtime personal fave, brilliantly sequenced

also fantastic

upthread predictions that they'd be referenced as a classic band in retrospect seem unfortunately wide of the mark. we'll remember you, clearlake

Thanks for bumping this thread, spun "Lido" and "Cedars" for the first time in yonks. Still hold up, love the lyrics. I want to live in a dream!

their grasp of album sequencing on those first two records is wondrous

Lido meant a lot to me when it came out, I had just come out of a phase of doing a lot of drugs and had dropped out of uni and didn't know what was next, I had this mix of being kind of burnt out and a failure but also waking up to the world. It really captured that feeling so well that it felt like it had been written specifically for me.

Another Cedars fan here ... “wonder if the snow” and “trees in the city” are favorites

I think pitchfork is how I found them

This band are still painfully underrated.

I need to re-listen to all of their albums ASAP... I still find it incredible that this band were swept under the carpet the way they were.

part of my dumb animus toward the arcade fire is people losing their shit over 'funeral' when 'cedars', released not that long before it, had been relatively unheralded. i know it's not a competition but pitchfork nation can sure be easily blinkered

but...in a rare stroke of inspiration, pitchfork gave cedars 9.4 iirc

oh, 9.1

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/1495-cedars/

that's still a LOT for a british indie band

Pianos Become the Teeth sound like an emo band again and I'm not sure how to feel about that yet

https://open.spotify.com/track/5kEHz2d1bafXdAem3PfIya

woops wrong thread lol

that's a great review for a killer album but they never became one of pitchfork's hype bands, despite ruling way harder than some i could name

i really loved this band at the time but for the life of me, i can't remember one thing about them other than they were mellow. i own two or three CDs.

just found and added 'amber' to the archive.
I feel I have missed out on something rather special.

and it's only their third best album!

so I see.
however, I was not on the labels mailing list re earlier stuff so this will have to suffice.

it's pretty good for something that will have to suffice

It's Getting Light outside was always a great mix opener.

Anything new from Jason Pegg since his 2nd solo album? I can't say those made much of an impression on me, though I did enjoy them.