Walk All The Way To The Moon

The Clientele “Garden Eye Mantra”

The beauty of The Clientele’s seventh album I Am Not There Anymore is in how it sounds like a self-contained world made of some other person’s memories, so listening to it feels a bit like jumping into a stranger’s brain and trying to make sense of how they draw connections between feelings, personal iconography, and how they interpret their past. Alasdair Maclean doesn’t make this easy – he’s generous with melody and vivid detail, but avoids being literal or linear in favor of something more like dream logic. For me this approach feels a lot more personal and intimate than someone actually spelling it all out for you, in part because it feels more like connecting with how someone actually thinks and less like how you might build a story about your life.

A lot of the mysteries suggested in the lyrics come across as mysteries to himself as well – like, what is the garden eye? Why does it seem so ominous, but also like an image conjured by a child based on how they interpret something mundane in a garden? It feels significant in that “Garden Eye Mantra” shifts from gorgeous and breezy chamber pop with a dubby beat to something far more heavy and menacing when it comes up, like dark clouds rolling in midway through a clear day. The same part recurs near the end of the record at the conclusion of “I Dreamed of You, Maria,” but in a more relaxed form that suggests some kind of resolution. I take it as a personal mythology or superstition from childhood, first presented in the emotional reality of a kid and then later on as a fading memory of something long outgrown.

Buy it from Bandcamp.