The Clientele – ‘I Am Not There Anymore’ album review: a stunning return hinting at pastures new
After six years away, fans were expecting big things from London trio The Clientele, and they have not been left disappointed. Their new album, I Am Not There Anymore, is a triumph. Whilst you might take one look at the tracklist and think 19 is far too many songs, it is not. The record is an expertly constructed sonic palette that draws on psychedelia, jazz and the band’s trademark jangle pop, as well as a host of other areas, as frontman, songwriter and guitarist Alasdair MacLean conjures a journey into his past and ponders childhood and what it means to be yourself.
Whilst all of the band’s albums are incredible, not to mention 2000’s Suburban Light and 2009’s Bonfires on the Heath, there’s something about the maturity of their new offering and the scope contained that makes me think this might go down as their finest moment.
Brimming with artistic quality, it goes one step further than we’d expected with electronic moments, spoken word, and a range of exquisite instrumentation conveying that the trio has taken things up a notch.
An example of this is the interstitials called ‘Radials’ that crop up across the album, brief pieces constructed to inspire a change of focus between songs, courtesy of drummer Mark Keen. A compelling artistic choice, they add another welcome element to the album’s 63:05 run time. It might clock in at over an hour, but it doesn’t feel like a burden. It’s full of twists and turns that keep you locked in from the beginning. That is a triumph in itself.
“What happened with this record was that we bought a computer,” MacLean says of I Am Not There Anymore, and it shows. There’s more variety here than on any of their previous offerings, with the electronic tool allowing the band to dive head-first into environments they’d always wanted to.
The album commences with the eight-minute odyssey ‘Fables Of The Silverlink’. Driven by a 1990s-esque beat, this number is a fine sample of the surprises that The Clientele has in store for the listener on their new album. The pulsating rhythm and accompanying string movements are counterbalanced by the familiar sound of MacLean’s warm guitar work and moments of genuinely touching harmony akin to floating on a cloud when you’re high above, peering out the aeroplane’s small window.
Conjuring abstract images in the mind’s eye of everything from summers at the beach to gliding down country lanes with the sun poking through the flora, I Am Not There Anymore is a heady album that intersects with personal experiences, despite it thematically being so closely tied to the story of MacLean. This is another tremendous success.
The opener is followed by ‘Radial B’, an ephemeral track that washes over you, as the spatial notes of the piano tease that something more extensive and profound might be on its way, perhaps in the vein of The Pavilion of Dreams. Yet, it doesn’t, and this first ‘Radial’ does what it was intended to do and changes pace as the song ‘Garden Eye Mantra’ materialises.
After a briefly sinister turn, the track gives way to a more traditionally Clientele scape, where the delicate strings lift MacLean’s jazz-inflected guitar, bassist James Hornsey’s smooth performance, and Keen’s cultured drums. Later on, as we are fully lost in its splendour, it segues back into the darker area teased at the beginning that we had forgotten about, where MacLean’s gritty guitar drone and his repetitive, almost whispered vocals create hypnosis. Another aural delight, The Clientele assert on numbers such as this they are not a one-trick pony and that the tag indie-pop does not account for even a fraction of their work.
A highlight of the record is ‘Lady Grey’. Wasting no time getting off the ground, the band enter in unison after the brief roll of Keen’s snare. It’s complete with another brilliant bassline from Hornsey that connects MacLean and Keen’s performances whilst providing a ballast for the other orchestral consistencies. Broadly, the track is another one related to the majestic psychedelic moments of the 1960s, with images of The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle, Donovan and The Beatles circa 1967 coming to the fore. Blended with the more contemporary melodic mastery of The Clientele, both sides work together to create wonder as The Clientele beckon us to join them on this delight.
Another moment of note is the single ‘Blue Over Blue’. Whilst the song prompts images of wandering around aimlessly, stoned in a park on a hot summer’s day, it was actually inspired by MacLean’s experience of being lost in the woods with his son in Autumn, something totally at odds with the track’s essence. However, the playful angle of the psychedelia masks this and harks back to one of the album’s prominent themes, the memory of childhood.
This makes us wonder about the implications of MacLean’s following statement that I Am Not There Anymore is all about “the memory of childhood but at the same time the impossibility of truly remembering childhood… or even knowing who or what you are.”
Whilst I leave those who delve into I Am Not There Anymore to discover the full scope of its delight, I will say look out for ‘Chalk Flowers’. An introspective effort, the group forget the experimental flourishes for a second and gets back to basics. Complete with wistful, surreal lyrics and appropriately considered music, such as the piano’s plinky teardrops and the acoustic guitar’s slow strums, it captures the senses and is enough to make anyone drop what they’re doing and listen.
A brilliant return from The Clientele, I Am Not There Anymore is a sonic triumph. I wonder where they’ll go next, as they’ve opened themselves up to a whole new world on this record.
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