The Clientele Is Back. YAY.

Photo courtesy of James Hornsey

When I first listened to I Am Not There Anymore, the brand-new The Clientele LP coming out July 28, 2023, on Merge worldwide, I was a bit shocked. As you probably know by now, it feels different. The strings, the spooky goth vibe, the odd beats. It may not have the flow of a cohesive album, but the pop lovers among us will have more than enough to fall in love with, despite the dark undertones. In case that makes no sense, I’ll just say it: I love this album but it took a few go-rounds to get used to it all. I mean, it’s not that radical. It sounds like a band taking their time and flexing their creative muscles in the recording process. It sounds like one of the greatest living bands because it is. We caught up with Alasdair about what was going through their minds making the record. Scroll down for their U.S. tour dates; and hopefully more countries too since the UK seems to have finally noticed that these pop gods walk among them.

The album was recorded at Bark, Snap and Klank Studios, London from 2019–2022 with assistance from Brian O’Shaughnessy, Marco Pasquariello and Simon Nelson. All time greats Alasdair MacLean on vocals, guitars, tapes, beats, bouzouki, Mellotron, organ; James Hornsey on bass, piano; and Mark Keen on drums, percussion, piano, celesta. Additional parts played by Daniel Evans – extra drums on ‘Blue Over Blue’; Sarah Field – trumpet; Dave Oxley – horn; Ruth Elder – violin; Non Peters – violin; Stella Page – viola; Sebastian Millett – cello. The strings and horns were arranged by Alasdair MacLean and Mark Keen; ‘Through the Roses’ arranged by James Hornsey and Alicia Macanás, who also cowrote and sings on the lead track, ‘Fables of the Silverlink.’ That’s Jessica Griffin from the Would-Be-Goods doing the English spoken bits as well. Interview by Gail O’Hara / Thanks to James Clientele for the studio shots (even tho he didn’t take any of Mark Keen)

Front cover image: Long Life, 1823 by Kameda Bōsai, Minneapolis Institute of Art

Chickfactor: How long has this one been in the making? 
Alasdair MacLean: Three centuries.

If this one has a theme, what is it? 
Beautiful complexities (I hope). Above all, the feeling of not being real, of being outside yourself. I like to think of it as a kind of emotional autobiography set to music, but where all the details have been blurred and edited out, there’s just fragments and moods. 

The first time I listened, it felt *different* from previous stuff. What kind of record did you want to make here? 
We always tried different stuff in the studio before, but it was always a catastrophe. We tried to make a dub version of ‘House on Fire’ in a studio in rural Kent once, it was one of the most embarrassing episodes of my life. We did some jungle/drum and bass recordings with a live drummer when we were recording ‘Suburban Light’ but I had no idea what to add to them – it ended up with backwards tenor recorder and tritone chords on the guitar – horrible.

This time round we had a computer, so we could record in a studio and take tracks away to edit and add to, then bring back again, and slowly I worked out ideas which could bring in things I loved – flamenco rhythms, modal scales etc. which didn’t feel awful. It wasn’t like there was a band and a producer sitting there, looking at their watches and saying “er, where are you going with this?”

I joked that this was a goth record; but it is spooky and vintage sounding at times. What mood were you trying to conjure with Mark’s Radials and Alicia and Jessica? 
Mark has been writing spooky piano tunes for us since 2001 I think. So that’s nothing new – we got him a celesta to play on this time, which is an innately spooky instrument. Alicia sang notes I couldn’t reach in the Phrygian mode, and Jessica has such a lovely speaking voice. I was so glad when she agreed to help – it was like her voice was another of the instruments we could put together in harmony.

Photo via James Hornsey

How is what you listen to informing what you do? 
I like some electronic music and jazz and Spanish guitar music. I love this small group of artists from California, they are mostly released on the Cold Blue Music label. At the moment I’ve been playing Phillip Schroeder – ‘Passage through a Dream’ loads – it sounds a bit like Mark’s Radial pieces. 

Where does the songwriting process begin? 
Somewhere I have no access to.

How do you capture lyrics? A pen? A smart phone app? 
It always used to be a pen and a piece of paper. I’ve now changed to notes on iphone. Tragically, I also use a Trello board to swap things around and see if they look different in a different order. Quite often ideas come from quotes or images from books I read, so I take photos of the page too. 

Is your lyric book still available? 
I think there are a few left, somewhere at the back of my storage lockup.

Photo courtesy of James Hornsey

How did the pandemic change The Clientele? How did it change London? 
It didn’t really change the band; in some ways it made London better, less crowded. But it probably finished the arc which started in the late ’90s, where small businesses were made uneconomical, and everything became a chain store. Now the chain stores are going bust too.

You seem bigger in the UK than you were; true/false? 
True, among gentlemen of a certain age.

Brexit WTF? 
I’m tired of thinking about it, but I expect in some future time we’ll look back and realise just how truly sinister the consortium of people who took over the country were. 

If any good comes of it, it will be a general awareness of the obscenity of class privilege. Boris Johnson is a useful idiot in this regard – a very public symbol of unjust rewards.

How is fatherhood impacting the music-making process? 
It changes month by month. I’m happy to sit back and learn.

If London has a sound/smell/taste, what is it? 
Fermented fruit on the top deck of buses.

Photo courtesy James Hornsey

What is nature giving you that you desperately need? 
At the moment, mud.

Who are the 5 most underappreciated musicians in London? 
Musicians can’t afford to live in London anymore.

Got any recurring dreams you want us to explicate? 
Not of my own – I enjoyed reading one of T.H. White’s recently though – in the dream he was very anxious to hide his shotgun in the trunk of his mother’s car to avoid it being struck by lightning. It made me laugh a lot.

Best pub in town? 
I like the Flask in Highgate, or the Swimmer at the Grafton Arms in Holloway. The Great Northern Railway Tavern in Hornsey is a perennial favourite.

If you have to make food for friends, what is your star dish? 
Tortilla soup

What’s wrong with 2023? 
Music streaming, newspaper owners 

Who is the comedian in the band? 
Mark and James are both naturally funny, I have to try harder. I’m sort of the annoying one who tries to get a quip in every sentence, which is why I tend to dominate the interviews.

Do you have any band rules? Dress code?
Absolutely no ukuleles under any circumstances. 

Not the usual drummer / courtesy of James Hornsey

What are you reading? 
I love Anne Serre and Marie N’Diaye

‘26 views of the Starburst World’ by Ross Gibson is a wonderful, reflective book, it was recommended to me by Anwen Crawford who also wrote a beautiful book last year called ‘No Document’

There’s a forgotten English writer from the early 20th century called Mary Webb who I’m tracking down slowly. 

Perhaps because I’m getting old, I’m revisiting a lot of classic British children’s literature: The Dark is Rising, The Box of Delights, Ursula LeGuin and Diana Wynne Jones   

What are you watching? 
I haven’t been watching much of anything. I need film recommendations.

What is your advice to fans when it comes to supporting you? 
Buy records, use bandcamp, book tickets.

On behalf of all CLIENTELE fans, why can’t you just put out one album per year?
We used to put them out once every 2 years, and that nearly killed us. We were told we had to, or people would forget us. But when we stopped, we got more popular! I guess there are enough records in the world already without releasing more just for the sake of it.

What’s on the turntable these days? 
Pharaoh Sanders- Floating Points
Arthur Verocai
Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids
Jimmy Campbell – Half Baked
I’ve also been listening to a lot of Tom Verlaine since he died. A lot of what he did beyond the guitar playing – the approaches he took – really fascinates me.

btw, of course we interviewed the Clientele in our paper zine chickfactor 13, Y2K, still available in our shop. Get the new album here.

Not the usual drummer either / courtesy of James Hornsey
Tiny baby Clientele
The band circa 2017
Artwork by Tae Won Yu; created for a CF22 poster (2014)

catching up with daily song generator jessica griffin from the would-be-goods

Jessica Griffin from the Would-Be-Goods in London, 2001. Taken by Gail O’Hara

chickfactor 13 (2000) published an interview with Jessica Griffin from the Would-Be-Goods 21 years ago conducted by Peter Momtchiloff, who ended up joining her band, which also features Deborah Greensmith and Andy Warren. I took a lot of photographs of them while I lived in London (2001 and 2004) that have ended up on their album covers, and the WBGs have played at many chickfactor parties. While some of us haven’t been able to focus or achieve our creative potential during COVIDtime, Jessica has become rather prolific. We checked in with her about how it’s going. Interview by Gail O’Hara

chickfactor: how are you holding up? 
jessica griffin: Fairly well, although my dreams are much more vivid than usual which must mean I’m more stressed out than I think. 

How different is your life under lockdown than it was before?
In some ways, very different. Peter (my partner and fellow Would-be-good) has been staying with me since it all began, and I’ve got into a different routine, cooking twice a day (except at weekends) and writing and recording songs daily.

What has been getting you through this time? Books, food, etc. 
Peter’s company, Zoom chats with friends and songwriting. I’m too restless to read much these days, although when I’m feeling anxious I devour 20th-century detective fiction. We’ve been watching the short Cocktails with a Curator talks from the Frick Collection and old black-and-white British films, e.g. Spring In Park Lane, Cast A Dark Shadow. I’ve always cooked regularly but food seems much more important now. We have a proper lunch every day which is quite old-fashioned (and French!) and I’ve expanded my repertoire quite a bit.
I find cooking very calming.

Jessica performing at the Luminaire; photo courtesy of Jessica

What do you miss most about beforetimes? 
Friends and family. I haven’t seen my (grown-up) daughter for over a year as she lives in another city. She’s very Victorian and doesn’t do FaceTime/Zoom. And I really miss my almost-daily lunches at a wonderful local cookery bookshop/café run by an eccentric Frenchman. 

How has London changed since this happened? For better or worse.
I haven’t been further than a mile from home since March 2020 so I can only talk about my own part of west London. In the first lockdown, with almost no traffic and very few people around, you could smell the grass and flowers in the gardens and parks. 

Seeing so many local shops, restaurants and cafés go out of business is heartbreaking, though. 

Can Brexit be reversed? 
Probably not in our generation. I think it’s a huge mistake.

Let’s talk about your new songs! When did you start writing one song per day? And how many are you up to now?
2 October 2020. I thought it would be good to have a creative project as I was slowly turning into my grandmother. I’ve written 157 songs so far. 

How has Peter been involved in the process if at all? 
My idea was to treat songwriting like a game or challenge, so I asked Peter to give me a title every evening. I would write and record the song the following day and play him the result. It’s worked for me in the way nothing else has. Sitting around waiting for the muse never got me anywhere. I should say that Peter doesn’t have any preconception of what the song should be about, or how it should sound. He just gives me a title and that’s it. Sometimes I will change the title retrospectively if I think it suits the song better.

Otherwise it’s a solo project — I do all the singing, play all the instruments (apart from bass on a few songs) and recording.  

What have you learned about yourself as a songwriter, a musician and a home-recorder since you started doing this? 
I’ve learned not to be so precious about songwriting and to treat it like a job that I have to get on with every day, whether I feel like it or not. It’s helped me to override my perfectionist tendencies as I have to finish the song by the end of the day and play it to Peter even if I’m not happy with it. And I’ve learned that I can’t trust my own judgement, at least my first impressions. Sometimes I’ll think a song I’ve just written is rubbish but when I listen to it again a few days later I like it. And vice versa. My singing, guitar and keyboard playing were quite rusty at the beginning but they’re improving. And being in charge of the recording process means I can do as many retakes as I want, which has helped me to sort out some things I didn’t like about my singing. 

Jessica and Peter in London, 2001. Photo by Gail O’Hara

Can you give us some details about some of the songs? Titles/subject/etc. 
“Ouija Board Romance” is set in a provincial English town in the 1920s and is about a housemaid being invited to join a séance hosted by her employer, and the unexpected result. “The Magic Hour” is about a suicide pact between a spoiled young man and an older courtesan in a hotel in Khartoum in the siege of 1884. “The Wind Will Change” is about a drifter in 1940s America, written from the perspective of a woman or girl who loves him but knows he’s not going to be around for very long. “Demon Lover” is the story of the ‘damsel with the dulcimer’ in Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan,” who is outraged that she’s been spirited away from her loom in rural Devon and abandoned in the dark cavern of the poet’s imagination. And finally, “Cavanagh, Cody and Byrne” is about a mysterious vaudeville act that might actually be something much bigger.

I don’t know where these ideas and characters come from. I always wanted to be a writer or film director so maybe these are the novels I would have written or the films I’d have made, compressed into song form. I can picture the characters and their settings in detail and I know who would play the couple in “The Magic Hour” – Omar Sharif and Jeanne Moreau. I’ve also written some songs about universal experiences and situations with quite simple lyrics which aren’t like anything I’ve written before. 

And some songs in recognisable styles but from a female perspective, like “In The Mirror” which sounds like an angsty early Who song but is about being a young woman, having to be what other people want you to be and being able to be yourself only when you’re alone.

Do you have any rituals or unusual holidays that you celebrate? 
My daughter said at age six that she thought it was unfair that we had Mother’s Day and Father’s Day but no Daughter’s Day so we instituted it and I send her a hand-made card and a little present every year.

What are you reading? 
I started reading Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and Rachel Cusk’s Transit but am finding I can’t concentrate for long.

What is in your fridge? What is your specialty to make?
The usual stuff, plus Thai green curry paste, tahini, fresh ginger, kefir. We’re eating very healthily—everything cooked from scratch, lots of vegetables, etc., but possibly a little too much of everything. Irish soda bread (Darina Allen’s recipe) is my lockdown speciality. I make it with spelt flour which gives it a kind of soft sweetness like English scones.   

If you were running the country (or the world), what would you do first?
I would absolutely hate to be in a position of power and can’t even imagine it. Being the mother of a small child was challenging enough.

What is your sign? 
Cancer.

What is your spirit animal?
A rather small and motheaten bear. 

When we’re allowed total freedom, what will you do first?
Meet up with my sister and take her for the birthday lunch we had to cancel last year because of lockdown.

Any other future plans? Where and when will you release some tunes? 
I’ve just set up a page on Bandcamp where I’ll release some of my new songs very soon. Beyond that, I hope to finish the Would-be-goods album we were working on before lockdown and to start doing live shows again (if there are any venues left).

Thank you, Jessica

chickfactor international travelogue: notting hill/bayswater, london!

honey-kennedy-gail-ohara-london-8-jessica-from-the-would-be-goods

notting hill/bayswater, london (part two)

by jessica griffin, the leader of fantastic london pop group the would-be-goods, mum to an oxford student, foodie and psychology enthusiast, among many other things. she has lived in the neighborhood for 23 years! chickfactor can attest to the super-greatness of al waha as mentioned below…

best venues: the tabernacle, powis square.

best record stores: rough trade, 130 talbot road.

best thriftstore: fara, 10 elgin crescent.

cheap eats: books for cooks (great cookery book shop with test kitchen and café at the back), 4 blenheim crescent. taqueria, 139 westbourne grove. royal china (daytime only, for dim sum). tawana (authentic, friendly thai), 3 westbourne grove.

not so cheap eats: al waha (best lebanese in london), 75 westbourne grove. hereford road, 3 hereford road.

vegetarian-friendly eats: ottolenghi, 63 ledbury road; al waha (see above).

best drinking holes: cock and bottle (splendid traditional pub), 17 artesian road.

best coffee or tea houses: during the summer and early autumn, the temporary pavilion next to the serpentine gallery, kensington gardens. a different architect or artist designs the pavilion each year.

cool cinemas: gate picturehouse, 87 notting hill gate.

best used bookstores: notting hill books, 32 palace gardens terrace.

best local bands, artists, writers, designers: simon fisher turner (film music composer and erstwhile king of luxembourg).

parks and green spaces: kensington gardens, bayswater road (or kensington gore).

unmissable highlights: artisan du chocolat (best chocolates — and hot chocolate — in london, or maybe anywhere), 81 westbourne grove. leighton house museum, 12 holland park road, kensington.

photo of jessica by gail o’hara.