Like Young Forever, this CD takes me back to the early days of 6 Music — in fact, almost to the first week I listened to it. In April 2003 I got one of those anglepoise iMacs, and at last I could play music on a computer. Technically this was possible on the all-in-one iMac DV I'd had previously, but if you turned up the volume as far as "audible" the vibrations from the speakers turned the screen into a physics lesson on wave interference. So I'd heard about 6 Music after its launch the year before, particularly when John Peel, on his programme, saluted Gideon Coe for playing The Fall at 11.30 in the morning.
And one of the first shows I heard on 6 Music had a live session with The Clientele. Again at 11.30 in the morning — or more precisely 11.41, as Gideon Coe's ritual followed the 11.30 news with two tracks back to back, before going to the live band. The questions Gid asked betrayed him as someone who seriously loved the music he was passing on, and had done his homework. More than once I heard artist interviewees splutter in response to a question, "Wow, you've actually listened to our album, all the way through!" I think he genuinely likes The Clientele, too (look who plays them most on the BBC.)
That session was when the band were promoting The Violet Hour. It's strange to think that I was already on board as a Clientele fan when the second album came out (of first, for those who count Suburban Light as a superfluous singles compilation). Seven years on, I still feel like I'm only an apprentice fan. There are still some things I don't fully get. The obsession with Felt is one, and, as mentioned before, this album feels like another. I doubt I'll ever write a review of it like this one — but that's OK; I like the sense of still having further to go, more to absorb.
It was during that interview with Gideon Coe in 2003 that I heard about the technical problems the band had while recording The Violet Hour. My favourite sequence on the album is the last four or five tracks, and I listened to them early in the morning on my birthday, on headphones. The background hiss is ever-present, and has its own charm. But on Lamplight — which, through its status as a mainstay of the live shows, has become The Clientele's Xanadu — you can really hear a distorted buzz on the vocal on the right channel.
There's a very good film of the whole of Lamplight live, but if you just want the fireworks…
I saw The Clientele twice that year. The first time was at the Water Rats, and I would have invited Lucy there on what would have been our second date, but it was a Tuesday, and at the time she always worked late on Tuesdays, getting the magazine ready for press. That was probably where I bought this CD. A couple of months later they played The Spitz and this time Lucy was available. I was confident she'd like them and I was right: she bought her own copy that night — so now we're a three-Violet-Hour household.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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