The Clientele

Even as the Clientele's hazy, soft-focus pop suggests the influence of virtually every musical ancestor worth acknowledging, the band's pastoral beauty nevertheless conjures a dreamscape entirely its own; fusing the heady otherness of psychedelia with the gentle caress of folk, Suburban Light swirls and settles like gold dust. Like the artist Joseph Cornell, the titular subject of one of the disc's most memorable songs, the Clientele assemble and juxtapose found fragments (collected from forebears like Love, Nick Drake, and Donovan) and transform their source materials into something magical and new; although the record's 13 cuts assemble various singles and scattered recordings, the finished product hangs together with a clear sense of purpose and scope. Over repeated listens, the songs grow both more distinctive and more interconnected, boasting a richly nuanced intricacy as intoxicating as it is elusive. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide