You can sense it from the sugary tunes he cranks up on every Cut Worms project: faint reminiscences of the Beatles’ playfulness, Neil Young’s eloquence, and the Byrds’ idiosyncrasy. He doesn’t get too wound up in yesteryear sentimentality, though; he finds a vacant corner to design a rock’n’roll vade mecum of his own. The excellent double LP Nobody Lives Here Anymore, released in 2020, suggests just as much. “Sold My Soul” and “The Gold Sky”, the best songs there, are George Harrison–core rock’n’roll that stores their lyrical twists in Clarke’s modern narrative. Three years later, he dresses up as a charming artist of the bygone era once again on his new self-titled project, ever an old soul.
As the summer heat embraces the northern hemisphere, Cut Worms, now Clarke’s third record under this moniker, arrives as handsomely as the tidal waves that ramble onto the shore: high-spirited yet uncompromising in their force. Having a self-titled album released at such an apt time will likely turn many spotlights in his direction, reclaiming what Nobody had intended to achieve but was hindered by the global pandemic. Besides, it isn’t interwoven by a uniform concept. There’s a song about murder and innocence (“Ballad of the Texas King”), being a hopeless romantic (“I’ll Never Make It”), and autumn boredom (“Living Inside”). Instead, they form a mutual node that Clarke terms “pop essentialism”.
What he truly means by that remains a mystery, but as he’s deeply devoted to the early stages of pop, “essentialism” in his book could be the making of songs in ways that are faithful to the genre’s sonic origin and its fixed characteristics, as well as the pursuit of implementing and mastering them. “Take It and Smile” stays close to the traditional verse-chorus structure, with a sumptuous guitar solo as the post-chorus (strangely, it sounds like a slowed version of the Byrds’ “My Back Pages”). However, this idea doesn’t apply to the song’s lyricism, and here comes the paradox that makes his music so captivating: these easy-going tracks would fit finely in the late ’60s radio, but not too snugly.
Cut Worms, despite its accurate rendition of rock ’n ’roll classics from the time, never is a mere intimation of them. Planting his musical gifts in swoony, infectious strums and retro instrumental inlays – “Take It and Smile” is genuinely one of his greatest earworms – Clarke completes the songs with modern-language entries about COVID-related isolation and loneliness. “Living Inside” aches with restricted outdoor activity; “Is It Magic” contemplates the aftermath of the pandemic; “Too Bad” laments the missed opportunities. It’s the ultimate documentation of the everyday, breathing in the exuberance of a bygone summer, each turn of phrase hinting at an exciting change: the world is finally transitioning from monochrome to colour.
