The Clientele Music for the Age of Miracles

A warm welcome back to The Clientele, who have announced the September 22 release of Music for the Age of Miracles, their first new album in seven years! Check out the lyric video for “Lunar Days” below, which paints a picture of London’s Russell Square at twilight and “things on the edge of sight” according to frontman Alasdair MacLean. In other words: quintessential Clientele.

Music for the Age of Miracles features cover art by renowned British artist Carel Weight. Over in the Merge store, the album is available on CD and standard black vinyl, as well as a deluxe edition on blue swirl vinyl that is paired with the new “All Alone” b/w “Lyra in August” 7-inch. All three options can be pre-ordered and bundled with an exclusive t-shirt. The album is also available digitally here.

After the release of Minotaur in 2010, Alasdair made two wonderful albums with Lupe Núñez-Fernández as Amor de Días, issued a Clientele best-of called Alone and Unreal, oversaw reissues of Suburban Light and Strange Geometry and played shows solo or as part of Amor de Días or The Clientele. He and Lupe have also been raising a family; according to its author “The Age of Miracles” here is partly a song about fatherhood: as he says, “the empty house being filled, the weird sleeplessness, the seasons sneaking up on you.” But the prospect of a new Clientele record seemed to be diminishing.

It seems fitting, then, that a chance meeting with a ghost from the past/future is what led to Music for the Age of Miracles, the first album of new Clientele songs in seven years. Alasdair and Anthony Harmer knew one another and played music together in the mid-1990s but had lost touch.

“I had often wondered what had happened to Anthony since,” recalls Alasdair. “It turned out—he told me—he’d studied the Santoor, an Iranian version of the dulcimer, and over decades become a virtuoso, at least by my standards. He suggested we have a jam together. Ant and I now lived three streets away from each other, it turned out. He started to arrange my songs. He let me write and sing them and he came up with ideas for how they should sound. This carried on until we had an album. I called up James and Mark and asked them if they wanted to make another Clientele record. They did, and this is it.”

So, a new collaboration with an old acquaintance led to a new Clientele album. Anthony Harmer joins the line-up of Alasdair, James Hornsey (bass) and Mark Keen (drums, piano, percussion), contributing string and brass arrangements as well as guitars, vocals, keyboards, saz and, yes, Santoor.

God save the Clientele and welcome back.

1. The Neighbour
2. Lyra in April
3. Lunar Days
4. Falling Asleep
5. Everything You See Tonight Is Different From Itself
6. Lyra in October
7. Everyone You Meet
8. The Circus
9. Constellations Echo Lanes
10. The Museum of Fog
North Circular Days
The Age of Miracles