The Clientele - I Am Not There Anymore

Released: 28/07/23

Listening to the cracking single Dying in May' from The Clientele's superb new LPI Am Not There Anymore(the group's first in six years), it occurred to me that one of the reasons I was digging it so much was its vague similarity to New Fast Automatic Daffodils' Big' (from 1990'sPigeonhole) “ another being that it's strange syncopated indie sounds like if David Axelrod experimented with Samba, and added some particularly lovely Lata Mangeshkar-esque strings.

But then on track nine, Blue Over Blue', the group sound likeMutations-era Beck with a particularly plangent Jim O'Rourke on vocals; and on the wonderful Claire's Not Real', the verse conjures up Brel or Gainsbourg doing Bossa-Nova, while the chorus sounds not unlike Cat Stevens' Here Comes My Baby'.I Am Not There Anymore, then,is a prismatic work full of such magpie moments, which are the intoxicating sound of a three-decades-old band in full-on experimental mode, pushing towards a new sonic frontier. In the hands of lesser groups the album would come off as disjointed, but The Clientele are one of the best and most inventive British indie-pop bands going, and as such it sounds seamless “ and never less than thrilling.