The Clientele's Alasdair MacLean Talks "Spooky" New LP, Considers Breakup

"I think it'd close the chapter quite well." The Clientele's Alasdair MacLean Talks "Spooky" New LP, Considers Breakup

For more than a decade, the Clientele have released a steady stream of 60s-inspired folk pop that projects a dreamy world filled with reverbed guitars and British mysticism. They could seemingly teach graduate classes on all things Zombies, Kinks, and Beatles. The consistent-yet-undervalued London group are signed to Merge in the U.S.-- they're playing the label's 20th anniversary festival in July-- and are getting ready to unveil their fourth LP, Bonfires on the Heath, tentatively due this October.

We went long distance and called lead singer Alasdair MacLean at his home outside of London to get the skinny on what we can expect from the new record. He proceeded to tell us about an "accidental" LSD trip and why Bonfires could very well be the last Clientele album...

Pitchfork: Is the new album all wrapped up then?

Alasdair MacLean: We finished mixing. We started recording in that really quiet period between Christmas and the New Year because we wanted to capture a deadening, spectral ambiance. Since then it's just been on and off right through the end of April. The idea for this record was to see what the four of us can do rather than something like God Save the Clientele, which had about 25 people on it.

Pitchfork: So you'd say this album is a more austere affair than the last one?

AM: It is. It's more full of ghosts and doubts and signs and wonders than any other Clientele record. It's very spooky and tremendously sad at times. It's about watching yourself disappear.

Pitchfork: Were there any incidents that occurred in your life that caused you to reflect in that way?

AM: Last summer, there was an incident involving an accidental ingestion of LSD in Spain. It's the most cliché thing, but it did have an effect on me. It gave me new ways of thinking about music and songwriting. It was like a slap across the face of my psyche.

Pitchfork: What's the story behind this LSD trip?

AM: [laughs] It's not something I would like to glamorize. It's dangerous stuff.

Pitchfork: Right, but you said it was accidental...

AM: It was accidental on my part, but not on the part of the person who put it in my drink.

Pitchfork: I see. Are we talking about some sort of mortal enemy of yours?

AM: No, just somebody who never quite left the 60s and wanted to open my mind. I've never taken LSD before...by accident. When I was growing up it was easier to get a hold of acid than it was to actually buy beer in the little town I lived in outside of London. But it wasn't something I ever wanted to get into the habit of taking.

Pitchfork: So how did the accidental LSD experience relate to the album?

AM: Well, a week or two later I was volunteering at park in South London and it was a beautiful Indian summer day and every leaf was reflecting the light. Right then, I had this moment of complete unreality. It gave me this veneer of distance and added to the sense of not really being there.

It's like how the Clientele are a ghost band because everything we do is through this pop-art lens. We won't play a folk song, we'll play a Peter Blake painting of a folk song. After that day in the park, I went home and wrote six or seven songs, all of which are on the record.

Pitchfork: Did you continue to volunteer at the park?

AM: No, that was enough for me. I went home and tucked myself into bed with my mother's cocoa, which I do endorse.

Pitchfork: Going with this ghostly idea, were you reading anything particularly haunting around this time?

AM: The literature that has always really inspired me to write songs has been in the background, books by people like Alan Garner and Susan Cooper. They wrote children's books based on British myths or Welsh myths in the 70s. It's not really about the plot as much as it's about the way those authors hit a sense of dread that ripples through the atmosphere and it disturbs the world a bit. There's just an uneasiness to it that you don't find in much contemporary literature.

Pitchfork: Some people say similar things about the Harry Potter books...

AM: Don't get me started on those. The Harry Potter books are like Oasis to Alan Garner's Beatles.

Pitchfork: Are there any new songs that stand out to you right now?

AM: There are a couple covers. One called "Tonight" by a really obscure Swedish band called Evergreen Daze. It's a graceful, last-song-at-the-prom-type song, just full of sadness. And we covered the very first Clientele song we ever recorded, "Graven Wood", which closes off the album. So it's almost of like we're returning to where we had started from.

Pitchfork: Was that odd covering your own song?

AM: It was really emotional because the song was written when we were 17, and I remember when we were thinking it up in a wood while coming down off a fairly heavy dose of, um, something or other. It was very late into autumn, and the last leaves were turning red, and [former member] Innes [Phillips] went home and wrote this song. The lyrics are something like, "Now I recall the reason why you came to stay/ Falling in a dream where nothing stays the same." And that still applies to me today.

To put it much more bluntly-- you just wonder why you bothered. You just wonder whether the choices you made-- to be an artist and make music on your own terms-- trapped you. The deeper you go into yourself, the more chance you have of becoming lost, and I think that's something that plays out throughout this record.

Pitchfork: Does that mean this is the end for the Clientele?

AM: It might do, I haven't really decided yet. I think it'd close the chapter quite well. If you don't have any more ideas you should just go away, I guess. But I don't want to announce that the Clientele is breaking up. It's always up in the air, you constantly have to rethink what you're doing and wonder whether it's courageous enough.

Pitchfork: If this is the end, would you be satisfied with what the Clientele accomplished?

AM: It's a body of work that I'm not ashamed of. We survived generally being ignored in the UK, which I'm quite proud of. A lot of people would have given up if they'd been handed out the kind of treatment we get in our home country.

Pitchfork: Do you wish for greater acceptance at this point, do you care about that?

AM: I don't particularly care about it now. As pompous as it might sound, I don't feel like I have anything left to prove-- even if all I've really proved is that I'm mediocre at writing songs.

Pitchfork: So would you just go away?

AM: I'd like to say I'd go away but I'm already recording something else. There's a side project that I'm doing called Amor de Días which is Spanish for "the love of days." It's a collection of my songs and a collection of Lupe [Núñez-Fernández] from Pipas' songs. It's all acoustic guitars in jazz and Spanish rhythm, and half of it is in Spanish.

Pitchfork: Well, congrats on finishing the album.

AM: Yeah, we've done everything except go out for drinks to celebrate.

Pitchfork: Is that a ritual?

AM: It's a ritual at the beginning, middle, and the end.

Posted by Ryan Dombal on May 11, 2009 at 2:35 a.m.

Tags: Interview, The Clientele

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