Send "The Clientele " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Who could have guessed, as the first decade of the new millennium came on like a clean slate, that the Clientele would have a multi-album career in them? A follow-up to the band's 2000 singles collection, Suburban Light-- so ingratiating and familiar it felt like the distillation of some heartsick indie-pop ideal-- seemed less impossible than superfluous. When something feels perfect, you don't necessarily want want xeroxes, however much you may think you want more in your life. Yet here we are, as the first decade of the new millennium slumps to an ignoble close, with the fourth Clientele album. (Fifth, if you count Suburban Light.) And thankfully the band never really did attempt to reconjure the magic of those early singles, perhaps realizing that leaning on the same reverb-blurry signature would have dimmed the original's charm. What made the Clientele special proved surprisingly durable across multiple releases, fidelity upgrades, and songwriting shifts.That special something at first felt impossible to convey. Atmosphere. "Vibe." Put on a Clientele record and you're entering a space, one crafted as much through sound as lyrical associations, which tend toward the kind of quasi-cinematic string-pulling that makes for the band's own brand of enjoyable cliché. It's lonely without tipping into alienation. It's in tune with the power of memory without being deadened by generic nostalgia. It's someplace where changes in the weather can leave people dumbstruck. And if the music itself were a hair more melodramatic, its wistfulness would probably be unbearable. But the band's restraint, skirting emotional didacticism while still providing room for listeners' own specific states, appeals to humanity's more evanescent (and maybe pop-resistant) feelings. If you're never going to hear unfettered joy on a Clientele record, they're never woe-is-me slogs, either....full text |
| Popmatters |
| On record, the Clientele can create whole worlds with their music. From the grainy places of their early singles to the ghostly whisper of The Violet Hour, or from the parting clouds of Strange Geometry to the sun-soaked bliss of God Save the Clientele, the band has been wandering through the same pop mist without ever settling in the same exact spot twice. And so it is with Bonfires on the Heath. Their finest and most expansive collection to date, and one of the finest pop offerings of 2009, this album takes all their strengths—haunting and sublime—and amplifies them into a collection that moves bleary-eyed and dreaming through nights that rise, huge and cool, and swirl around you, leaving you to make sense of the eerie quiet they leave in their wake. This is an album of observation, even a vision quest of sorts. Everything seems to happen at a distance. Somewhere in the night, kids build bonfires and jump them like jackals. There are voices in the hall on the other side of the door. Alasdair MacLean swears there are “phantoms in the gaps between my bones.” And even when he goes out into the world, when he gets dragged through the streets on “Never Anyone But You”, he sounds removed from it all. “I can only see you,” he pines over and over again, unable to recognize the streets around him, to find ground under his feet....full text |
| Culturebully |
| English band the Clientele have been constantly evolving since their late-’90s inception—probably more than they are credited for. Though their growth is undoubtedly present from the rainy psychedelia of 2000’s Suburban Light to the shimmering Britpop of their most recent effort God Save the Clientele, they still often get accused by detractors of “always sounding the same.” That is partly because of how much Alasdair MacLean’s breathy baritone defines the band’s sound, but mostly it’s due to the fact that the Clientele’s musical shifts are so subtle and deliberate that to the casual listener they can be difficult to discern. So, when the band stated that their new record Bonfires on the Heath would be “spooky and tremendously sad,” it wouldn’t have been unthinkable to respond “well duh, after all it is a Clientele album.” It would an unfair judgment though to place Bonfires firmly in well-worn territory however. While it doesn’t take the band in any radical new directions, it does incorporate some intricate sonic additions that make it unique. For the most part Bonfires builds on the fuller sound that the band first dove into with GSTC. Relatively new keyboardist Mel Draisey’s presence is notable for starters, though not quite as pronounced as the pre-album chatter had suggested. The real difference is in the diverse array of instrumentation, which started with GSTC and is expanded here. Particularly the brass section, which gives the opener “I Wonder Who We Are” a slightly exotic flavor, and makes the bridge of “I Know I’ll See Your Face” seem downright mariachi. There’s also quite a bit of Spanish influence in the classical guitar throughout record, and is that a sitar I hear? Damn, that must have been some LSD that MacLean was on when he conceived the new record (he was on an accidental trip after a “friend” put the drug in his drink without his knowing). The Clientele has a knack for enveloping influences rather than letting them run free, and as diverse as the music gets it never drifts too far from the Clientele mothership. And that mothership’s cannons have been lovingly loaded to the brim with the band’s signature melancholy psychedelia, English pop, and dreamy imagery. While the new aspects of the sound make an impact, overall they are just along for the ride....full text |
The Clientele lyrics
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