Tag: The Clientele

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Playlists

Playlist: New tunes from 2023, part three

Ok. Fine. I’m really late with this one. I typically try to post my quarterly updates to my ongoing playlist featuring new tunes of the year within a couple of weeks of the end of the quarter. We’re getting near the middle of November and it’s already starting to feel like winter. Summer would normally be a distant memory… except…

Except it was an excellent summer.

I started off July at Ottawa’s Bluesfest and saw some excellent sets of music over the course of its just over a week and a half duration. Then, a road trip at the end of that month brought new experiences, beaches, a hike on a mountain ridge, great food, and craft beer. In August, there was a hiking trip in Algonquin park and in September, a quick getaway to squeeze in the last dregs of summer. Definitely one to remember, especially with all the other craziness going on in the world.

Musically, there wasn’t a lot of new music that came across my desk that caught my ears and attentions. However, and as you will see below, what there was was all very excellent and in fact, many of the albums in which these songs appear will likely find their way on my on to my year end best albums list*.

If you want, you can check parts one and two of the playlist before you peruse further or you can just skip to the new songs below. If you’re one of those that find twenty-five tracks overwhelming and you just want some highlights, you could do worse than start with these:

      • Canadian singer/songwriter, Colter Wall, and his deep, deep voice are back with a new album and “Corralling the blues” is just a tumbleweed blowing across the deserted highway
      • “The narcissist” by one of my all-time favourite bands, Blur, spearheads a surprising new twist and turn for the band on its latest reunion album
      • Speaking of returns of favourite bands, the eight and half minutes of “Fables of the silverlink” shouts The Clientele from far and away and allows the echoes and reverb speak for themselves
      • Drab Majesty recently toured with Slowdive while supporting their new EP of dark and shadowy dream pop, of which “The skin and the glove” is the most upbeat and accessible
      • “Simmering” by Pale Blue Eyes is anything but – boiling over is more like it and like it a lot I do
      • Canadian indie pop quartet The Beaches invoke a lot of memories and laughs with “Shower beer”, just one of the many fun tracks on their latest
      • Soccer Mommy has released an EP of great covers by bands like R.E.M. and Slowdive but I am really digging her version of Sheryl Crow’s “Soak up the sun”

Here is the entire playlist as I’ve created it:

1. “Portrait of a clear day” Julie Byrne (from the album The greater wings)

2. “Independence day” Palehound (from the album Eye on the bat)

3. “Corralling the blues” Colter Wall (from the album Little songs.)

4. “The narcissist” Blur (from the album The ballad of Darren)

5. “Fables of the silverlink” The Clientele (from the album I am not there anymore)

6. “Close to the clouds” Art School Girlfriend (from the album Soft landing)

7. “Jaws” Dizzy (from the album Dizzy)

8. “Too far gone” Islands (from the album And that’s why dolphins lost their legs)

9. “The skin and the glove” Drab Majesty (from the EP An object in motion)

10. “Home” Hannah Georgas (from the album I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care)

11. “Morning zoo” Ratboys (from the album The window)

12. “Kisses” Slowdive (from the album Everything is alive)

13. “Simmering” Pale Blue Eyes (from the album This house)

14. “What’s the point in life” Coach Party (from the album Killjoy)

15. “Weak in your light” Nation Of Language (from the album Strange disciple)

16. “Between the past” Woods (from the album Perennial)

17. “Shower beer” The Beaches (from the album Blame my ex)

18. “Bug like an angel” Mitski (from the album The land is inhospitable and so are we)

19. “Stop talking” Will Butler + Sister Squares (from the album Will Butler + Sister Squares)

20. “Soak up the sun” Soccer Mommy (from the EP Karaoke night)

21. “Foreign land” Teenage Fanclub (from the album Nothing lasts forever)

22. “Dead man” Postdata (from the album Run wild)

23. “Everything at once” Bleach Lab (from the album Lost in a rush of emptiness)

24. “Cramps” Slow Pulp (from the album Yard)

25. “Snowman” Blonde Redhead (from the album Sit down for dinner)

Apple initiates  can click here to sample the above tracks as a whole playlist.

And as always, wherever you are in the world, I hope you continue to be well. Above all, enjoy the tunes.

*If I ever get it pulled together and drafted…

If you’re interested in checking out any of the other playlists I’ve created and shared on these pages, you can peruse them here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2003: #19 The Clientele “Porcelain”

<< #20    |    #18 >>

London-based indie pop band The Clientele have appeared on these pages a few times already. A couple of their albums have appeared high up on the Best Albums lists for the years in which they were released (see here and here) and in their first appearance with “Rain” off their debut release in 2000, I talked a little bit about my introduction with the band. This came in 2003 with the release of their sophomore album and first proper studio album*, “The violet hour”.

I remember being in constant discussion with Jez, my friend and colleague at the time, about the bands we were discovering during our shared favourite post-work activity: trawling the Internet for new and exciting bands. I’m not sure which of us happened upon this particular album first but we were both enamoured with it right off the bat and I’m sure that our other colleagues must have tired of us raving about it. It almost became a running joke to bring them up at least once a conversation.

I’ve been following the group ever since, through the various lineup changes and hiatuses, and though each of their albums have been special, “The violet hour” is still my favourite. It is a collection of tracks that sounded like nothing else at the time and at the same time hinted at music from a bygone era. Track eight was this mellow but peppy number called “Porcelain”. It shared the feel and environment of the rest of the whole, like dewdrops glistening in the bright morning sunlight and gauzy curtains billowing in the warm summer wind. Like the echo of a half-remembered dream. MacLean whispers and croons his la-la-las and the guitars and drums and even that wicked bass line that pops its head in for munchies, they’re all sopping wet with reverb. And the words are not a narrative as much as they are an oil painting.

“Sunlight on the empty house and sunlight on the fields
The cul-de-sac, the law, the tracks, the lane
But the world is porcelain
Yes, the world is porcelain”

Incidentally, “The violet hour” is the only one of The Clientele’s albums that I still don’t have a copy of on my vinyl shelves but this is only because it hasn’t yet been reissued. I was beginning to think I’d never have a copy because I’d heard that the master recordings were lost but I am pretty sure that frontman Alasdair MacLean has since announced that they were found. So far there’s been no reissues announced but perhaps this year for it’s 20th anniversary? One can hope.

*Given that “Suburban light” was more of a compilation of early singles and b-sides, much like Lush’s “Gala” ten or so years earlier.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2003 list, click here.

Categories
Albums

Best albums of 2000: Albums #10 through #6

It’s been more than six months since I started one of these Best albums of the year series so I figured it was about time for a new one. This time around, I am taking for focus my favourite albums of the year 2000, the year chosen in a random, not quite random kind of way*.

My relationship with music around this time was what you could term complicated. If you go back and look at the list of my favourite tunes of 2000 that I did a few years back, you’ll note that it’s only a list of fifteen songs, rather than the usual thirty. I had a real hard time finding music that I liked in those days and this can be attributed to many things. It is most of all likely because I was on a low after the wealth of great British music being exported to Canada during the Britpop explosion in the second half of the last decade. So for me, great songs were few and far between but I still managed to identify ten great albums as favourites when taken as a whole. And it is these that I plan to present to you over the coming weeks.

If you’ve been around these pages before, you’ll recognize today’s post as the tease, introducing the five albums that round out the latter part of my top ten. From here, I used to out my five favourite albums for the year over the course of the following five Thursdays, one per week, but given how well it went when I stretched out my countdown of albums I did for 1991 back in January, February, and March, I’ve decided to do the same here. I will still focus on an album per post, doing my best to the paint each album’s importance to me and to music in general, but instead, will do so every other Thursday and wrap all this up in the beginning of October.

So let’s do this. And of course, as we do, I’d love to hear your thoughts, both on my picks and what your own would be, if you had to rank your top ten albums for 2000, in the comments section provided with each post.

#10 Richard Ashcroft “Alone with everybody”

Still smarting from the breakup of the Verve a mere two years after the release of the near perfect “Urban hymns” in 1997, I went out to the stores to purchase the first Richard Ashcroft solo album on the day it was released. When I arrived back at my apartment that afternoon, I realized that my roommate and friend, Ryan, had done the same and we both sat down that evening to give it a listen. But I’ll stop right there because this is a story that I already told when the lead single “A song for the lovers” appeared at number five on my Best tunes of 2000 list. I’ll just say that I really wanted all of “Alone with everybody” to be just as great as that first single but in my mind, it was only half successful. Richard Ashcroft is a phenomenal voice and songwriter to be sure, but he definitely needs a sounding board. There is an unfortunate amount of forgettable mediocrity on the album but luckily, those are more than balanced by exuberant moments of pure pop perfection.

Gateway tune: “A song for the lovers”

#9 The New Pornographers “Mass romantic”

It’s always been interesting to me that The New Pornographers were referred to as a supergroup right from the beginning. Sure, each member all had other projects on the go, but I’d hazard that when their debut, “Mass Romantic”, was released, only Neko Case and Destroyer’s Dan Bejar had anything resembling a following on their own merit, and even those must be taken with a grain of indie salt. Nowadays, though, the title certainly fits and it’s truly amazing to me that such a large collective of artists have enjoyed such successful longevity together. This debut was three years in the making and displays a wealth of power pop worthy of the praise heaped upon it. It wasn’t always a favourite of mine but it has grown steadily in my esteem over the years to exponential heights.

Gateway tune: “Letter from an occupant”

#8 The Cure “Bloodflowers”

Much like the album at number ten, I bought The Cure’s 11th studio album, “Bloodflowers”, on CD pretty much as soon as it was released. I had gotten into the iconic post-punk band led by Robert Smith over a decade earlier and the love affair that followed culminated with my purchase and adoration of their 1992 album “Wish”. I completely missed out on the interim album, 1996’s “Wild mood swings”, and still haven’t ventured into that whirlpool, with the possible exception of the singles. Speaking of which, the lack of any obvious singles on “Bloodflowers” was what struck me right away on first listen. It was definitely a return to their darker sound, but bigger in scope and immersiveness. Indeed, the whole is greater than its parts in this case, a complete album experience.

Gateway tune: “The loudest sound”

#7 The Weakerthans “Left and leaving”

The Weakerthans are a band that I’ve known for many years but never really appreciated until it was too late. I saw them live twice, once in 2001 (one year after this particular album was released) and again 2008, but in both cases, I wasn’t actually at the show to see them. And though I enjoyed them both times, I didn’t actually getting around to diving deeply into their music until well after they went on hiatus in 2014. Indeed, their sophomore album “Left and leaving” still wasn’t even on my radar when I started counting down my favourite tunes from 2000 back when I started this blog in 2017. Nowadays, though, I find myself in awe of this melodic folk-rock band out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the incredible lyrics of its frontman, John K. Samson. Like all four studio albums by the group, “Left and leaving” is chock full of literate narratives that name-check Canadiana, Winnipeg in particular, and speak to each and everyone of us unsure of our place in the human condition.

Gateway tune: “Left and leaving”

#6 The Clientele “Suburban light”

I first got into the reverb-drenched indie pop of London, England’s The Clientele with their sophomore studio album, 2003’s “The violet hour”. Everything I heard off that album smacked loudly of Luna, another band with which I had been obsessed around that time, except that all the production sounded purposefully older and frontman Alasdair Maclean’s vocals were a lot more breathy than those of Dean Wareham. Nonetheless, I was in love and set about ensuring my eyes and ears were alerted to anything the band had previously released and news of anything new. For years, I thought their first proper release, this one, “Suburban light”, was a compilation album and so wouldn’t be eligible to appear here on this list. However, it was a simple misunderstanding on my part that had basis in the fact that at least half of the songs on this album had been released previously. But perhaps I am talking too much and just need to let you click on the link below for a sampling of what’s on offer. If you like sunshine and lemonade light and naps under the shade of trees and a light a breeze, The Clientele, this debut especially, might just be your cup of tea.

Gateway tune: “Rain”

 

*Don’t ask me how I am choosing the years for these flashback/throwback best albums series… I am trying to spread them out and at the same time, trying not to interfere with the Best tunes lists I’ve got on the go. It’s a delicate game, definitely not for the faint of heart…

Check back two Thursdays from today for album #5 on this list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.