Minotaur
Retro Brit-poppers the Clientele were on such a roll with 2009’s *Bonfire On the Heath* that those recording sessions produced an excess of material, and plans were made for a mini-LP to follow in 2010. *Minotaur* is far from a collection of b-sides and extras; if double-LPs were a fashionable thing these days, *Bonfire* would have been this band’s *Exile On Main Street* (OK, minus some boozy sweat and grit). From the spot-on, breezy sweetness of “Paul Verlaine” to the melancholy-tinged “Minotaur” and atmospheric “As the World Rises and Falls,” there are enough classically “pop” textures here to give *Minotaur* its breadth; experimental/spoken word track “The Green Man” and the brooding piano interlude “No. 33” add to its depth. The Clientele bears the mantle of being one of the most under-appreciated purveyors of poetic and thoughtful indie-pop, and that’s a burden that should soon be lifted.
The UK cult act continues to draw from 60s soft-pop yet adds off-kilter twists-- a spoken-word, musique concrète ghost tale-- on this mini-LP.
Unlike The Clientele’s typically slight between-album EPs, Minotaur runs eight songs and 30 minutes, which makes it almost an album unto itself. And one of those songs, a spoken-word piece called “The Green Man,” written by bassist James Hornsey, practically serves as a Clientele thesis statement, with its lines about…
The Clientele's 2009 album Bonfires on the Heath was one of the best, most hauntingly beautiful records of the band’s impressive career -- so strong that it spawned an equally wonderful EP made up of songs recorded at the Bonfires sessions that were deemed suitable for the album itself.
It seemed for a while that last year’s Bonfires on the Heath would be the final time anyone heard from the Clientele, an English band with a penchant for...