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 Caught in the Carousel - Music Reviews and More
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Clientele
God Save the Clientele
Merge
It's hard making friends. Forging acquaintances and the sustained social niceties that follow, submitting to casual acts of emotional or intellectual fascism, conveniently omitting the less than savory aspects of your personality so as not to appear manic at cocktail parties and bonfire trysts--blah blah; it's all an illimitable struggle. Music and the assiduous devotion to it makes such coquetry and cordiality almost impossible, the ground which holds it barren and impregnable. Your standards become so militant that you are made into a craggy, cantankerous despot--wary of individuals who find favor with music you despise. Most people would enjoy this, I can't necessarily blame or condemn them for it, but most people are churls and waifs and dallying bores. I'm unfamiliar with the Clientele, but why they're occupying a label which shares the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel (whom I’m only about half-fond of), Robert Pollard, that terrific Clean anthology et al, it's simply beyond my means. It isn't entirely disagreeable, it paces itself and has all the recognizable blips, whistles and quirks which find favor amongst the "indie" folk; it's an ideal way to spend an exceptionally drained and dreary Sunday morning, I imagine--but I kept endlessly twittering and twitching, rapping my knuckles and hoping desperately that anything remotely unsanitized would transpire. There's a tremendous fault in genres and archetypes in that everything inevitably begins to reiterate itself, to lose shape and form and amorphously blur, listeners become too readily accepting of anything that shares certain sonic properties. In the event that this happens, it's incredibly difficult to avoid the pratfalls and perils of mediocrity. This is what xanex must sound like. Flogging all the tired tricks from the Lennon-McCartney ledger, the album drags itself out with "Here Comes the Phantom," which affects that tragically overused, hop-along-sunny-streets, "Cell of 44," yeah-we-were-really-influenced-by-the Beatles, "Mr. Blue Sky" beat. Imagine the Zombies without hooks--that'll nicely approximate it. "The Dance of the Hours" is like an outtake from another, lesser-band's "we've matured now" album. "Bookshop Casanova" is worth noting because of its failed attempts to mime the unctuous vocal maneuvers of Jarvis Cocker. On "The Garden at Night" (something of an incongruous entry) they actually find the distortion pedal--but by then it's far too late, everyone's lamely set themselves out to drift and off to sleep. Contentment does this to people, I guess. Sure it's nice, but "nice" is a stinking, puffing, pusillanimous adjective when speaking of music. Music should animate people in some way, not drape them in a cardigan with a cup of cocoa. I'm sure Pitchfork has already heralded this as the Clientele's Pet Sounds or something, but to my ears it makes Belle and Sebastian sound like Chrome.
--Brandon DiSabatino
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