Tag: 12″

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Clientele “God save The Clientele”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Clientele
Album Title: God save The Clientele
Year released: 2007
Year reissued: 2017
Details: 10th anniversary reissue

The skinny: I got myself on a Clientele kick last month when the London-based dream pop band finally reissued their standout sophomore album, “The violet hour“, on vinyl, allowing me to complete my collection (for now) of their LPs for my record shelves. Of course, that set me off on a Clientele bender, which in my mind is never a bad bender. I got away from spinning their records for a couple weeks but now I’m back at it with their fourth record* and my third favourite album of 2007, “God save The Clientele“. It was their first album with the addition of violinist Mel Draisey, which added a whole other element to their already heavenly psych pop, and saw them oddly more upbeat than on previous outings. This record was added to my collection in 2017 when Merge reissued the album in celebration of its 10th anniversary, original album art intact but with the addition of a silver title enhancement.

Standout track: “Bookshop casanova”

*I’ll be taking a break from these while I work at finishing up the countdown of my favourite albums of the year but I looking forward to spinning the rest of The Clientele’s albums early in the new year.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Clientele “Strange geometry”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Clientele
Album Title: Strange geometry
Year released: 2005
Year reissued: 2016
Details: standard black

The skinny: More Clientele vinyl hitting my turntable this week, this one a warm and long overdue reacquaintance. “Strange geometry” was their third album, released in 2005, and would be the first of a litany new Clientele albums that would be hotly anticipated by yours truly the moment they were announced. It was only a slight letdown from the perfection of “The violet hour“, veering ever so slightly into pop territory, only very, very slightly mind you, but this didn’t keep me from eating the album up at all. Indeed, it wasn’t long before I was in love with its every detail. This particular piece has the distinction of being the first Clientele record to become part of my collection. I purchased the 2016 Merge reissue pretty much as soon as it went up for pre-order on Amazon for a very reasonable price in the $25 range.

Standout track: “Since K got over me”

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Clientele “Suburban light”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Clientele
Album Title: Suburban light
Year released: 2000
Year reissued: 2014
Details: 180 gram

The skinny: Okay. So I don’t usually make a habit out of posting two of these ‘Vinyl love’ pieces in a row. However, my most recent vinyl purchase, that of the long awaited reissue of “The violet hour“, and of course its requisite go-round on the turntable, immediately put me in the mood to listen to more of The Clientele. And while posting the piece a few days ago, I came to the realization that I hadn’t beforehand published a single ‘Vinyl love’ post on any of their long players, of which I now have all of them on my shelf. So I’ve decided to remedy (and perhaps overcompensate for) this oversight and run the gamut over the next few months, starting back at the beginning, with their debut, 2000’s “The suburban light”. The English dream pop trio cobbled together demos and rough (sometimes home) recordings for this debut, preferring their sound to the versions that resulting from time spent in proper studios and because of this, the album was oft mislabeled a compilation* rather than an album proper. My copy of the record was the one Merge reissued in 2014 with the original artwork and tracklist, as part of its 25th anniversary series, pressed to 180 gram vinyl using the original analogue tapes. So beautiful.

Standout track: “Rain”

*Indeed when I posted about “Rain” (the song above) for its entry on my Best tunes of 2000 list, I referred to the album as such.