Pitchfork

The Clientele's latest album God Save the Clientele finds the London band tinkering with their distinctive sound, brightening the tone and continuing the move from lo-fi to lush. One track, "Bookshop Casanova", even flirts with a disco beat, and it's certainly among the peppiest songs in their catalogue. The song's new video mostly plays it straight, showing Alasdair MacLean and the rest of the group as they sit in a diner, waiting for something or somebody. It steers away from the obvious (not a book in sight) and also suggests some sort of Waiting for Godot excercise in futility, until the band members start to feel the groove and dance in place. Only violinist Mel Draisey is moved to leave her seat, the rest flail about for a bit and then return to looking glum, perhaps using their most upbeat track to comment ironically on their former image as unrepentant melancholists. Below the new video is the band's first: the grainy slow-mo clip for "Reflections After Jane", a song found on their 2000 full-length Suburban Light, sums up nicely the appeal of their dreamy early aesthetic.

The Clientele: "Bookshop Casanova"

 

The Clientele: "Reflections After Jane"

[From God Save the Clientele and Suburban Light; out now on Merge]