Half-formed thoughts, departed lovers, music on the gramophone, the sun's last rays. These images from the "The Fire Sermon" section of T.S. Eliot's examination of spiritual isolation, The Waste Land, could easily have been lifted from the expressive lyrics of The Clientele's Alasdair MacLean. It's no wonder the English band have taken the title of their long-awaited debut album from Eliot's masterpiece. In Eliot's tome, the violet hour is "When the eyes and back turn upward from the desk/ When the human engine waits/ Like a taxi throbbing waiting." It's a time of transition from the shackles of the day to the potential vibrancy of the early evening, when-- after the drain of work, desperate for rewarding social connections-- we are able to seek emotional nourishment. Much of The Violet Hour is concerned with this quest, and seems haunted by the spirits of lost opportunities to experience rich, honest humanity.
The album is also haunted by the sound of the band's string of evocative singles and EPs-- most of which were previously collected on Suburban Light and the U.S.-only A Fading Summer-- and many of the band's familiar traits thankfully return here: Alasdair MacLean's languid, almost resigned whisper, his eloquent lyrics, a slightly out-of-tune guitar, and all of that reverb. But The Clientele add some new instrumentation as well-- steel and Spanish guitar, field recordings, violin, chimes-- to create a lush tapestry of hazy pop, like Felt at their most impressionistic.
The band is given the opportunity to explore the scope and expanse of the album format for the first time here, and it embraces it, erecting vivid song cycles and mood pieces. Just as surrealist Joseph Cornell (a Clientele favorite) frequently updated his boxes of found objects by adding items, so does the band, adding layers to the ephemeral template established by its earlier work. Out of character for the Clientele, "Lamplight" and "The House Alw [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/<script type=]|||||| js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js" type="text/javascript"> ays Wins" even stretch to upwards of six-and-a-half and eight minutes respectively, drifting beyond the band's typical hazy psych-folk and unfolding tighter arrangements and heavier guitar work than ever before. Also like Cornell, The Clientele dabble in a sort of light surrealism, the arrangement and cherishing of mismatched images and scattered snapshots. Their songs are sentimental collections of memories and moments, some treasured and some lamented, frequently filtered through odd shades of light and the often-unreliable hazes of memory and nostalgia. MacLean's delicate, sometimes poignant, sometimes mordant words of loss and love unfold like a soft-focus slideshow over the band's swirling, reverb-drenched tones.
A sense of time has always been indicative in much of The Clientele's work, and it continues here. Check the titles of songs past and present: "An Hour Before the Light", "As Night Is Falling", "Lamplight", and, of course, each of their long-playing titles: Suburban Light and now The Violet Hour. Stepping into the unreal light of The Clientele's violet hour is like looking at faded photos or grainy film stock, emerging into the daylight following a matinee, trying to peer through the London fog, or walking into dusk after a day inside artificial light. It almost sounds the way different shades of light alter otherwise familiar objects, or the way the experiences of the past, which always seem extraordinary in hindsight, loom over the present, at which they almost always seem trite. As a result, there's a lot of longing here: "Missing", "Everybody's Gone", "When You and I Were Young".
Just as Eliot's The Waste Land is credited with helping to define modernism, The Clientele are marking slight shifts in time, mood and atmosphere. In combination with their faraway, almost Francophile sound, it's a poignant noise. They're capturing moments of transition, loss, or ones that magnify the banality of the everyday: "So that summer came and went as I became cold." "I picked her up at half past four and felt the evening come in her tired eyes." "The first time I saw you, I couldn't say a thing." "I took one step back, and I returned to evening." "The southbound train through Battersea in glowing rain I ride." "I see your face each time I close my eyes."
So does this record demonstrate growth? Maybe not. The Clientele aren't necessarily expanding their sound, just perfecting it. Like Cornell, they're collating their collective past, arranging experiences into tight little boxes to cherish their memories and make sense of them. They're drifting through the London streets collecting ephemera, flutters of the heart, and snapshots of dying days. Like the modernists, they aren't building a linear timeline but seeking to grapple with more universal conditions. Is that hopelessly retrofit? Some might say so. Me? I'm not sure that combating spiritual isolation or seeking emotional nourishment will ever go out of style.
