The Clientele has always specialized in the surreal. Their 30-plus years of recording explore so many genres and flavors yet every creative leap always circles back to the band’s love of melancholy tones and grandiose melodies. Despite their many artistic endeavors, The Clientele always finds a way to reimagine their already adventurous take on pop music and their latest offering is no different. I Am Not There Anymore is the latest larger-than-life addition to The Clientele’s critically acclaimed discography. The 19 tracks presented here explore those moments of silence in between songs, using otherworldly arrangements with lush textures as a platform for the album’s moving poeticism. Within this hour of music, no creative stone goes unturned as a band whose legacy speaks for itself looks to add an ambitious brushstroke to their vivid abstract-painting-style discography.
I Am Not There Anymore begins with an ode to prog-rock in a way only The Clientele can conjure up. “Fables of the Silverlink” is the monstrous intro to the band’s latest, a chugging orchestra welcomes you to an album that promises to be as complex as the soaring arrangement of its opening track. The tracklist comes to a quick halt with the preceding song, the beautifully minimal “Radial B”, an instrumental breather after the roaring of track one. Immediately, the band builds conflict on the LP. Opening the album in such a lavish way only to tear down the moment with a minute-long piano melody introduces us to the concept of the album; the highs and lows of a fond memory. The Clientele looked to put the feeling of a loving memory turning sour to music, a difficult emotion to explore let alone accurately put to a melody and chords. Miraculously, The Clientele did just that on these songs. They created an album with so much conflict that the beauty of it becomes emphasized, allowing the sentimental and poignant lyrics to pierce your heart while the velvet-lined instrumentation tends to the wound.
I Am Not There Anymore is a challenging album to digest but its most off-kilter songs only make the moments of relief all the more satisfying. The band softens the blow of their ambition with gentle melodies and slow-burning arrangements that evoke the sensation of a flower blooming after a rainstorm. The screeching strings and spoken word vocalizations of “My Childhood” is immediately soothed with “Chalk Flowers”, a stand-out moment on this gigantic LP. The lyrics on “Chalk Flowers” spin a youthful narrative while those avant-garde strings of the previous track become beautiful and assist the rolling piano and soft acoustics. The single “Dying in May” combines the two worlds explored throughout the album, a pounding drum pattern is offset by whimsical chimes and baritone strings. The Clientele created a tracklist that finds consistency in its experimentation, allowing the band to bounce between moods and tempos freely and find new, exciting means to deliver their heartfelt words.
The hour of music on The Clientele’s I Am Not There Anymore flies by with a widely entertaining gusto while satisfying the band’s restless creativity. The album makes the experimental sound familiar through moments of blissful rock and roll followed by onslaughts of freaky prog-rock influences I Am Not There Anymore is a statement piece from a band with nothing to prove but all the tireless creativity the world has to offer, and The Clientele wastes none of it.
