The Clientele - Suburban Light
(Merge)
The Clientele are firm believers that quiet is the new loud. Following in the
new folk-pop footsteps of Kings of Convenience, The Clientele are soft rock at
its softest. However, The Clientele are a much worse band than the duo from
Norway. While the Kings offer two great, supple voices and quite a bit of interesting
guitar interplay, all The Clientele offers is cheesy bass playing, a rich
British accent hiding a below average voice, and a more purely retro song-style.
In other words, all that is to be liked about the folk Kings is replaced by
shabby British craftmanship. Sure, to some, there's an appeal just because it's
British, but just like British sportscars, a condition to your purchase is
the understanding that what you're getting is of a lot less quality than other,
stronger makes.
This retro song-style is not the soft rock of The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Love,
or The Byrds. This is the soft rock of bands like Bread. Sappy, nauseating,
music-less soft rock with light, almost nonexistent instruments.
With almost no guitar ingenuity, we're left with a vacuum of sound where the music
was to be and a cheeky Brit crooning in order to take up all that leftover space.
True, honest-to-goodness, Frank Sinatra-style crooning, only Alasdair MacLean is
no Frank Sinatra. Actually, he is not even a Nancy Sinatra. Perhaps he's a Frank
Jr.
If you are in love with British accents, buy an Arab Strap record.
Hell, even buy a Travis record over this. In fact, you might as well just buy another
Guided by Voices record. The Clientele simply offers no marketable skills--subpar
singing, cheesy bass playing, and a total lack of skill at the guitar. The
Clientele is most likely the worst band ever to release a record on Merge.
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