The Clientele - Bonfires on the Heath

Red wine, curling smoke trails, brown anoraks, orange leafed trees; these are a handful of the images that The Clientele zoetrope through your brain on their newest release. Bonfires on the Heath, their sixth outing, feels husky and weather worn, as if each track was hung over the fire for a smokey flavour. But enough about salmon, because wandering romanticism and long scarfs are back in. Whoopie! Let’s not kid ourselves now, they never went out of style in the first place.

Through Classical training and years of recording experience, The Clientele have tended and grown a level of pop songwriting and musicianship that feels good and right to envy. Their simple but effective arrangements, assimilated from just a typical selection of instruments, is further evidence of their ability. Bonfires on the Heath strolls on safely down the same path.

The record poses a dreamy, autumnal mood and evokes the season’s particular poignancy and sadness. It combines twinkling guitar lines (drunken sliding on the album title track), jazzy chordal structures and soft brass with the silky vocal harmonies of those two 60’s bums Chad and Jeremy (‘Jennifer and Julia’ being a near forgery). Their luscious ganja-pop, reminiscent of The Zombies, The Turtles, Love and The Small Faces, is offset by a funky, off beat guitar showing later influences, perhaps closer to Orange Juice.

Yes, it has it’s patchy moments and compositional sleep walking (‘I know I will see your Face’ oddly breaks into sub par flamenco during the chorus, scrabbling for some kind of variation.) Even so, after ending with two beauties: ‘Graven Wood’ and ‘Walking in the Park’, the resounding silence is a reflective one. Despite being only mild escapism, the literary equivalent of a holiday read, Bonfires on the Heath is so calm and relaxed (groovy even) that, as long it’s spinning, someone could be yelling bile directly in your face and you’d just sit there, smiling to yourself, in a dribbling coma, like a lobotomised Labrador. Has that convinced you?

(© Copyright 2009 Brendan Morgan)