Amor De Días is a collaboration between the Clientele's Alasdair MacLean and Lupe Núñez-Fernández, a Spanish vocalist who has spent the past decade performing as one half of indie pop duo Pipas. Street of the Love of Days is a full-length affair they've been sculpting together in London, "in secret," since 2008, bringing in other notable musicians to flesh out their pastoral, sometimes psychedelic chamber pop. Names include Damon and Naomi, Gary Olson of Ladybug Transistor, and Louis Philippe. There's isn't much in the way of clues as to why they wrote and recorded in secret, but this, their debut, sounds like an album that wasn't yet ready to be heard. It is beautifully crafted and rich in demure detail, but Street of the Love of Days is largely bereft of energy or direction.
It begins and ends very quietly. "Foxes" is a tip-toeing bookend whose arrangement includes harp, strings, and delicate melodic lead on Greek bouzouki. As she does in the bossa nova of "Late Mornings", Núñez-Fernández delivers her vocals here in Spanish whispers, all of which dovetail nicely with the gentle sonics at play. That sets the tone for the rest of the record. While her harmonies are top-notch at times (as they are in the appropriately autumnal lilt of a re-work of the Clientele's "Harvest Time"), Núñez-Fernández's vocal performance rarely hold forth. Similarly, when performing his share of the vocal duties, MacLean rarely applies his voice in a way that elevates a song. Those compositions that clearly bear his influence sound similarly muted. "Wild Winter Trees" is a strummed watercolor that could have been (might be) a Clientele castaway, but its sub-two-minute length suggests sketch more than anything else.
As a whole, the lion's share of this record tends to feel the same way: a collection of 15 wide-ranging wallpaper sketches rolled out over 42 minutes. For fans of MacLean's work in the Clientele, this may prove to be a serious letdown. Both his voice and songwriting gifts make themselves heard in a standout like "House of Flint", but very little here proves to be as dynamic or memorable as the rest of his catalogue. That owes more to the issue that these songs seem far too unfocused to be amplified. In fact, Pipas is a band just as rooted in the 1960s as MacLean's main songwriting outfit. And together they make a great pair, the smooth textures of their voices a natural fit. But whether they're swaying through Brazilian music or trying British folk, what's most clear is that right now their music shoots to set a mood more than anything else.
