About this item

Following the breakthrough success of 'Suburban Light', the 2001 collection of The Clientele’s initial singles and EPs, tastemakers and aficionados were eager to hear what the trio of Alasdair MacLean (guitars, vocals), Mark Keen (drums, piano), and James Hornsey (bass) could make if set loose inside a studio to record a full-length album. What they emerged with from London’s Medina Road Studios in the fall of 2002 was tantalizing: Their already sharply realized motif of ’60s psychedelia and modern fuzz-pop took on inflections of jazz, particularly in how the space afforded by the LP format allowed for a keener articulation of atmosphere.

The Clientele stretch the early evening of 'The Violet Hour' out infinitely, manipulating the structured time of the pop song the way poets manipulate the structure of language—to capture place, mood, stray thoughts, disappointments, potential, and, above all, longing. It is a shimmering jewel of a record, its languid melodies and reverb-drenched choruses at once sublime and tragic, its hazy, dreamlike discursions at once recalling the warmth of a favorite record played over a midsummer rainstorm while yearning for the mist-veiled future of a yet unwritten night.

'The Violet Hour' has endured decades later as a signature album in
The Clientele’s catalog, not only perfecting the sound that made the band
a message-board phenomenon but revealing entirely new depth to it. In its wake, it was no longer possible to declare them one of the best-kept secrets in indie pop. The Clientele were, and remain, one of the genre’s most important figures, and 'The Violet Hour' was, and remains, one of their most vital statements: a lush invitation to their underground.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Violet Hour
2. Voices In The Mall
3. When You And I Were Young
4. Missing
5. Jamaican Born Rhumba
6. House On Fire
7. Everybody’s Gone
8. Porcelain
9. Haunted Melody
10. Prelude
11. Lamplight
12. The House Always Wins
13. Policeman Getting Lost