Gregory R. Cristman

The Clientele played 'Chickfactor 22' at The Bell House with Versus, Barbara Manning and The Saturday People (pics)

March 24, 2014

Gregory R. Cristman

The Clientele @ The Bell House, 3/21/2014

chickfactor: what has the clientele been up to? are you back together for good or just a few shows?

alisdair maclean (the clientele): I’ve been slowly and painfully writing a novel, and playing in amor de días. mark has moved into a canal boat and is tuning pianos. james has been growing chillis and playing bass for comet gain. ¶ last year I wrote a couple of songs that sounded more clientele than amor de días and it coincided with an offer for the old lineup to play a festival in denmark, which we decided to do for fun. then merge asked us to record a song or two for their 25th-anniversary 7″ singles club so we had a chance to record together again. that’s all so far.

why was it important to reissue suburban light?

again, it was merge’s decision, as part of their 25-year anniversary reissues series. I over-listened to that record when we mixed it the first time round and I got sick of the songs. james and I were talking about how frustrating that whole time was, we kept losing drummers and we wanted those songs to be on the radio but we were in a little studio trying to cut out the hiss on the tape by sliding the faders up and down. every sound engineer we met tried to make us sound like radiohead. ¶ coming back to it was really positive though–we unearthed a lot of stuff everyone had forgotten. It was weird being in a room and hearing our younger selves bantering on tape. I think the reissue does it justice, and it seems to be a lot of people’s favourite clientele record so hopefully it will be enjoyed. – [chickfactor]

Chickfactor 22 happened last week (March 20 & 21), the Friday show featuring the recently reunited The Clientele who were sporting the trio line-up of the group that hadn’t played together live in nine years. That same line-up will play Merge 25 in North Carolina this July, and their classic 2000 album, Suburban Light, is getting a reissue this year via Merge with new artwork and a disc’s worth of outtakes. That’s out May 13 and you can preorder it now.

Also on the Friday Chickfactor 22 bill were fellow Merge band Versus who played mostly new material, but invited up former bandmember Patrick Ramos and Mascott’s Kendall Meade during “Blade of Grass.” There was also the very entertaining Barbara Manning, and a one-off reunion of early ’00s Slumberland band The Saturday People (featuring Pam Berry of Black Tambourine and Glo Worm). More pictures from the second night of Chickfactor 22 below….

—

The Saturday People