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 The Clientele is a London based four- piece, purveyors of the best thought melodies and exquisite sounds.
For many years a trio, Alasdair Maclean, James Hornsey and Mark Keen have welcomed violinist Mel Draisey into the fold, for that extra touch of delicate dreaminess. Having already released three critically acclaimed Lps, ‘Suburban Light [2000]’, ‘The Violet Hour [2003]’ and ‘Strange Geometry [2005]’, they are putting the finishing touches to their fourth album, currently known as ‘God Save The Clientele’ to be ready to come caress our ears in spring 2007.
Just as with ‘Strange Geometry’ they have decided to ask for a little help from their friend, French maestro singer-songwriter Louis Philippe, promising another unmissable masterpiece.
I meet The Clientele tonight in their small but perfectly formed East London recording studio, to chat about their enviable success Stateside, the musical departure that their forthcoming album should be and their opening for The Brian Jonestown Massacre in London and Brighton later on this month.
Florence: Tell me about your forthcoming album, probably to be called ‘God Save The Clientele’.
Alasdair: It’s being mixed over in Nashville at the moment and this week the mixes should all be done. It’s scheduled for February, maybe March.
Florence: I read somewhere that you’ve written a disco track.
Is that to be included on the album?
 Alasdair: Yes. It’s got a very good string arrangement by Louis Philippe, who has done something incredibly pompous on top of it, so it’s now a proper disco song!
Florence: Does it sit well with the rest of the album?
Alasdair: Absolutely not!
It’s quite a schizophrenic album anyway compare to our usual style but we’ll probably still get accused of sounding the same as ever!
James: Everything is catchy and tuneful.
On the last two albums we’ve made, every song was part of this ‘song cycle’ that’s a long, slow trip to a particular mood, a kind of a hazy mood.
This Lp will be very different and the disco song is the jewel in the crown of the record.
The writing is such that every song is a possible single, kind of like ‘Thriller’!!
Florence: On your last Lp ‘Strange Geometry’, you started working with Louis Philippe and using strings, so you’ve kept this theme going...
Alasdair: Even more strings!
We worked with his string players. Being used to his way of working they would finnish very quickly and then he got them to do more and more...so we’ve got a big string sound this time. It’s more of a Scott Walker type sound than an ‘Eleanor Rigby’ type sound!
Florence: Were you happy to let Louis Philippe take over your record and eventually change your sound?
Alasdair: We gave him complete carte blanche and told him to do whatever he wanted to do.
As a result he came up with some very unusual arrangements.
This will be the first record we haven’t mixed ourselves. With every other record we were completely in charge of all the sounds but this one we’re giving away for other people to add their own personality to it and take it out of our control.
Florence: This is either very brave or very foolish but why did you decide to let someone else stamp their mark...
Alasdair: We’ve made 2 or 3 records that had a similar mood all the way through, going deeper and deeper into an emotion but I wanted this one to be good humoured. I was happy to do my part and then give it to people more talented than me...I can’t write strings like Louis Philippe can write strings and I can’t record music like Marky Nevers [Lambchop] can record music...so I let them use their talent to add something to it and do something different.
Florence: I would have expected you to be very precious about a new record. Did you truly regard this one as a child and accept that it would become a teenager and eventually leave home?
Alasdair: Yes exactly and probably become a punk...
We’ve been so unbelievably precious about our early releases that this is an experiment to try and not be precious at all!
Pat [from Wilco] came down for the sessions and he added a lot to what we did and I wasn’t even there, I was partying and we let him do what he wanted. We let Mel do what she wanted...a group of collaborators and friends who could add an equal amount.
James: I think that in the past we’ve never had people we trusted to do a good job but now we’re at the stage where we work with people that we actually really respect as musicians, but we’ve never had that before because we never knew them.
Florence: Mel joined the band last year.
How did that come about?
Alasdair: She kept hassling us. She stalked us for years!!
Mel wrote to us, through ‘mySpace’ saying that if we ever needed strings...and then the next day Brian O’Shaughnessy who produced our last album and knew what we were looking for, called me and said “there is this girl who plays amazing violin who knows all about your band and you should call her!”.
The two things came together and we called Mel and then there was the first gig...
We were offered a show in a little village in the Spanish mountains, in the Basque country and as we got there they said: “this is the 350th anniversary of our village and we’ve chosen you to play to celebrate...”
They asked us to play in this 9th century Basque graveyard up in the hill but there were incredible electric storms that night so it was dangerous to stay there, so instead we played by a big cathedral which was decked out in Cortez’s gold. The gold that had come back from the Aztecs was all over the inside of this cathedral and we played just outside it to an audience of old ladies and small children who got gradually more bemused as the evening went on!
If Mel could take that she could take anything, so she was in!
James: After that Mel came on this incredible tour of America that lasted six weeks and then three weeks recording, so we were in each others’ pockets for a long time but it was fine and everyone got on!
 Mel: One of my friend told me about The Clientele and I listened to them on the net but I’d never heard anything quite like it, to be honest.
It’s very unique and I could see myself adding to it. It’s the kind of music I would want to write if I was writing myself. Lots of melodies, very dreamy with little schizophrenic bits.
Florence: The Clientele has been a trio for almost ten years so how did Mel’s arrival affect the balance and chemistry within the band?
James: It’s more fun and we feel that live there is less pressure on us.
Alasdair: I didn’t realise it at the time but with the last record we probably came to the end of the road of what we could do as a three- piece. If we’d carried on we would have just carried on in the same way but this has opened up a lot of avenues for us and made things a lot more interesting. It’s also a lot more fun to have a girl on tour, much more civilised even though Mel is the worst of all of us!
Only kidding!..it makes things a lot more pleasant and for me as a guitarist, to have a violin and keyboard player means that I can move back and play a little more rhythmically, I don’t have to be constantly projecting at the audience.
Florence: What did you listen to on tour?
Mel: They’ve introduced me to Love and we played a lot of Gram Parsons.
Alasdair: Love is my favourite band of all time.
I also like GhostFace Killah! I listen to some hip- hop these days but there aren’t many guitar bands I like at the moment because it all seems to have gone very corporate, in this country anyway
James: I like Art Brut and The Rapture.
Everything else seems to be like The Specials or it sounds like The Beatles, it’s very much regurgitated and I don’t see the point...
Florence: It’s obviously important to you to come up with new sounds but a lot of other bands do not have such qualms.
How do you feel about that ?
Alasdair: I think that it’s incredibly embarrassing and totally pointless.
A lot of the bands I really love come from the 60s and I try to take their ‘mysterious sound’, the unexplained things that they did.
Take a band like Love for instance, no one can really say what their records are about and that’s what’s so fascinating about them and that’s the real inspiration to me but to just sound like Love, to copy them would be a waste of time for everyone concerned.
You’ve got to take things that really fascinate you, the things that stay with you about bands from the past and try and build on that yourself...that’s what inspiration is, I think, otherwise you’re just a tribute band.
Florence: Unfortunately tribute bands are 10 a penny these days and I am still fascinated by the success of the worst of them all, Oasis, who have clearly never felt any embarrassment.
Alasdair: I think that they vandalised guitar music for a generation, they’ve ruined it and it almost became suspect to like The Beatles because of Oasis, and I love The Beatles. They are the first band I really loved but you can’t even compare them. One is so reactionary and the other one so revolutionary but I really think that Oasis ruined everything for everyone for a very long time and maybe we’re finally getting out of the Oasis hangover.
If only one of them would go bald, then they would be Status Quo, the mask would be ripped away and we would see them for what they really are!
Florence: Some of the worst music has overtaken the airwaves these days and unfortunately good bands cannot get discovered that way anymore.
James: The internet has taken away the gatekeepers. Even John Peel lost all his powers towards the end of his life because of it. People didn’t need him to find out about obscure music anymore and that’s a really good thing about the internet. But the other side of the coin is that it becomes this endless series of cottage industries that just stretch into the far horizon, it’s just different little patches of people who know about various things and that can be quite depressive at times but on the whole it’s good to get rid of the gatekeepers of radio and record labels.
Florence: How do you feel about opening for The Brian Jonestown Massacre?
Alasdair: I am worried about their groove!
They have a real Rolling Stones’ style rhythm guitar groove we just don’t have. We have a much more precise style like turning on a coin, very fast and going round the other way again. I just don’t want their fans to eat us alive.
However BJM can teach us a lot about jamming because we don’t jam, everything is worked out in advance.
 Florence: Can we expect some tracks from your forthcoming Lp?
Are you ready to play some of the new material live?
James: Yes absolutely!
Florence: Tell me about a song you wish you had written?
Alasdair: I wish that I had written ‘My Girl’ by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles because that’s the platonic ideal of a perfect song.
It’s just the most beautiful and perfect song you could possibly imagine.
Florence: What has been the highlight of 2006 for The Clientele?
Alasdair: For me it was our show in Portland, Oregon, when this line-up of the band really started to make sense and that was exhilarating.
James: That was a very good show for all of us and we had a great party afterwards as well!
Mark: Of the American tour, that was the best gig.
Mel: It was mine too because I could hear everything. It’s always hard to hear the violin when you’re on stage but that venue was amazing. The sound was so clear.
Florence: America is a very good place for you, where you’ve successfully toured many times.
Most English bands would kill to get to that point, so how did you do it, what’s your secret?
Alasdair: We got a label very quickly over there, Merge Records who were fans and signed us.
They’re very prestigious and you get a lot of credibility from what label you’re on but we don’t have anything like that in Britain and that’s the difference.
Florence: Anything to add?
Alasdair: Actually I want to revise my opinion... my highlight of 2006 was seeing New Orleans, for the first time and after the hurricane.
We played to a very small audience but people took us out for drinks afterwards. We were the first English band to play there after the hurricane and I had the night of my life and the next day we drove through this ghost city. All the shops are closed and as you drive through the downtown area from the French quarters you start to see tide marks on the buildings and numerals in chalk, on the doors, for the number of people they found in there. We went to a bar and spent all day there, not drinking but eating oysters, the most amazing oysters you could ever imagine, we played Gram Parsons on the jukebox and played pool and I’d never been happier in my life!
For me that was the best day of 2006.
Words: Florence ACHERY
www.theclientele.co.uk
www.myspace.com/theclienteleofficial |
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