Pitchfork

"You should only make records if you've got something to say," remarked the Clientele's Alasdair MacLean in an interview with Pitchfork's Scott Plagenhoef that took place late last year. Lucky for us, MacLean and his bandmates still have plenty to say, and thus, God Save the Clientele, the band's third full-length proper, should be gracing audio-playing devices in April 2007.

This time around, however, as MacLean told Pitchfork today, the Clientele have some slightly more positive things to say. "It's a lot more cheerful. It's a lot more of a happy record. It's an upbeat record, a fun record. Whereas the other records were very neurotic and depressed, I think."

Merge, the Clientele's longtime U.S. home, will deliver the new artifact, while the band haven't settled on a UK label. And although the tracklist has yet to be finalized, God Save the Clientele should include the telling "These Days Nothing But Sunshine", "Here Comes the Fountain", "Wench on Victoria Street", "The Dance After Hours", and "Bookshop Casanova"-- a disco number.

"There's a groovy, disco song, which still sounds like the Clientele," according to MacLean. "I said to the people at Merge, 'This is going to make us millionaires.' And they just laughed at me.

"But we'll have to wait and see."

"I actually wrote it in order to try and worry the people in the band," said MacLean with a laugh. "It's so cheesy; and I just thought 'They can't play rhythmically like this, they can't play with any kind of a groove. So let's just trip them up and make them look stupid.'"

But karma came through in the end. "Actually it was me who was causing the rhythmic problems when we were recording it! They played it perfectly."

MacLean cites Giorgio Moroder and Spiller's "Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)" as inspiration for the experiment in dance rhythms-- "That's what I was aiming for: A kind of house, Ibiza-type thing"-- but was quick to add that "Bookshop Casanova" is more of a momentary detour than a full-on disco direction. "The rest of the album is a lot more rhythmic and a little more upbeat than usual as well, but it's not like a disco album in its entirety."

Part of the upswing in mood on God Save may stem from the expansion of the Clientele from trio to quartet, with the addition of violinist/keyboardist Mel Draisey. Draisey cut her teeth in Scotland's Fence Collective scene (which includes James Yorkston and King Creosote) before crossing paths with the Clientele-- through a certain ubiquitous social networking website.

"She wrote to us through MySpace," recalled MacLean. "saying, 'If you ever need any strings, let me know.'" The very same day, as fate would have it, Brian O'Shaughnessy (who produced 2005's Strange Geometry) called MacLean raving about Draisey.

"And so we auditioned her, and it was lovely. She played violin but she sounded like John Cale; she almost made it sound like a viola, weaving these melodies around what I was doing. And I thought, 'Great, I can just sit back and play a bit more rhythmically now, and she can handle the melodies, and I can just play rhythm and sing.' Which is kind of what I wanted to be doing anyway. So it was perfect."

Draisey toured with the band this year and contributes extensively to God Save the Clientele-- which also boasts more string arrangements from Louis Philippe, whose embellishments lent Strange Geometry a refreshing autumnal hue.

"He's done about twice as many strings as on the last one," MacLean enthused. "He's really been let loose on this record."

Having other creative forces at play allowed MacLean to relax a bit, which led to God Save's more "cheerful" sound.

"I was just like, 'let the producer do what he wants, let the string arranger do what he wants, let everyone do what they want, and I'm not going to tell them what to do.' And as a result, there's some pretty stuff that's happened."

That producer is Lambchop's "Marky" Nevers. "We'd always liked the sound of [Lambchop's] records, and they recommended Marky...So we headed down there at the end of this six-week tour that we did in the summer, and we were absolutely physically and mentally exhausted and wrecked, and just recuperated in Nashville and made this record while we recuperated-- which gives it a kind of less-serious, less-somber air.

"It's a record that can laugh at itself."

Indeed, said MacLean, "We're still waiting on good ol' Marky to finish up the mixing. Hopefully he'll read that and get on with it."

The Clientele hope to mount a tour sometime next year with the Clean's David Kilgour and his current band the Heavy Eights. For now they have a pair of London dates scheduled in the coming weeks.

MacLean, for his part, just wrapped up a trip to Spain for "some winter sunshine" and a few solo shows opening for his friends in laptop-pop duo Pipas-- on Spanish guitar.

"That's what I learned as a child. I played Spanish guitar in Spain, and tried not to annoy them too much by doing so," MacLean recounted with matter-of-fact sarcasm.

"It's nothing professional. I just get up on stage and whatever comes into my head, I play. I play an Emmylou Harris song, and then I'll play a Mickey Newbury song, and then I'll play an Alasdair MacLean song. It's just whatever I feel like, really."

MacLean has no plans to record or release his Spanish guitar dabblings, but perhaps he should, as in Spain they were quite well-received.

The response was "really good, actually, pretty phenomenal. I had very quiet audiences, and they all seemed to come up and congratulate me at the end, and tell me it was much better than with the Clientele.

"So I just told them I'll get rid of those bastards as soon as I can."

JK LOL:

12-18 London, England - Cargo
01-06 London, England - Giles-in-the-Field Church