Clearlake Flashes Its British Charm

There’s a certain undeniable Britishness to recent UK exports Clearlake that the band seems to acknowledge they can’t shake. “Even at home, we’re told that our sound is like that,” bassist Woody Woodward sighs: “British.”

Two albums and six singles into their career, Clearlake seems poised to rise out of such simple categorization and into a more universal one: terrific rock and roll. Last summer’s Cedars, their shimmering sophomore album, emerged to near-universal acclaim, and since then the band has been engaged in exhaustive touring.

“We were with some country-ish bands out west, before meeting up with the Decemberists and playing a bunch of shows with them. We did a lot of smaller venues, which is nice, cause they always seem so packed,” Woodward says.

On April 13, Clearlake was playing a much larger venue—the Roxy in the Theater District. In the hours before their show opening for Stereolab, the band quietly sip at bottles of beer in the venue as they haul equipment onto the stage with the help of their roadies. A publicist comes by with an allowance for this time: ten dollars each for use at the bar. A call goes up for some take-out Thai food. There is no lavish backstage playground for these musicians. Members of Stereolab periodically emerge from backstage to check the scene.

Soon enough, Clearlake takes the stage for their sound check. Bantering back and forth and with their mixer about relative volume and tone problems, they perform snippets of their blooming catalog. Several of the stand-out tracks from Cedars tease the ear—blissful harmonies, swirling distortion.

Cedars was mastered by former Cocteau Twin Simon Raynolds, and the songs are uniformly coated in a glossy veneer, with sweeping doses of strings and bells. “It’s a lot rockier,” Woodward said about the album in concert. “It would be neat, someday, to do an orchestral type thing, think guys?” The other band members nod in approval.

The absence of the lush production is evident as early as the band’s sound check—the band’s sound is immediately spikier and much more stripped-down than on the album. Clearlake mentions an acoustic radio gig in Seattle as a recent source of some exposure, and they seem competent on both fronts: a lavish and emotional sound on album, and equally affecting acoustic and live arrangements.

After sound check, the band lounges about the venue in the hours before they take the stage. A few break for the door to enjoy a cigarette. “This smoking ban,” drummer James Butcher proposes, “is forcing people to be more social. No one likes not being able to smoke a fag indoors, but outside the smokers have their own little community.” He pauses. “In New York it was nice, we got to meet all these nice fans outside the club.” The band is quiet when asked about the prospect of such a ban hitting England.

Clearlake has been sharing a short series of gigs with fellow Brits Stereolab, a band of constant cult fame. Over a decade-plus-long career, Stereolab has consistently released some of the most popular indie pop, and their fame is far greater than Clearlake’s at this stage in the game.

“We’re not really intimidated to be sharing the stage with Stereolab,” Woodward remarks. “I mean, they’re not really that much older than us. We’re good friends with a couple people in the band, so we manage to get on pretty well with them. They’re not so much this ‘elder generation.’”

“I think he means that with them having put out so many records and being so popular,” Sam Hewitt, the lead guitarist, interjects in regard to the question of opening for the synth-rock giants.

“Oh. No, not really, then. I mean, except for playing these larger venues,” Woodward says.

By the time Clearlake takes the stage, the Roxy isn’t at full capacity, but gathered around the stage fans crowd and clamor for the band. “There are always some that manage to know the words,” Woodward says. “American fans seem much warmer, on a whole, than the British. We’ve felt much more welcomed by the audiences over here.”

The band is bathed in blue and red lights that heighten the contours in lead singer Jason Pegg’s face and long blonde hair. He regards the microphone at an angle, seeming to sing at it rather than into it, and his silvery croon is accompanied by occasional vocals from the microphones to his left and right, where Woodward and Hewitt round out the front line.

As he cradles the bass, Woodward’s foot dances along the board, switching between sounds and distortions. His right hand occasionally sneaks up to adjust the knobs and buttons beside him; he varies their sound to fit the mood of each song, which range from reflective meditation (“I Wonder If The Snow Will Settle”) to self-deprecatory invective (“I’d Really Like to Hurt You”). The band readily admits the debt they owe to their obsessive-lover Brit forebears. “They always say our sound draws a lot from the Smiths, and I guess that’s fair. That and the Cardiacs, whom not enough people have heard of—mention them. And Talk Talk—can’t forget that we sound like Talk Talk.” Woodson admits. “But we all like Talk Talk.” He laughs. “And the Smiths.”

The deep layers of guitar sound Johnny Marr was famous for swell in Clearlake’s compositions, and on-stage the band seems to enter a trance, enwrapped in the whorl of their songs. Bathed in the cool light, Clearlake strikes an ethereal chord, and the emotion of their sound constantly battles the rockiness of the chord and tempo changes. Pegg confines his voice mostly to the songs, pausing only to repeatedly thank the audience for coming out to see them on this night of “pissing rain.”

The image of rain is a fair one to employ both in regard to the night and the band’s sound, downcast but with shining points of brilliance, tiny and unexpected chord changes when a song has seemed to have fallen into pattern. Clearlake’s songs are involving, engaging and perhaps the only adjective all-encompassing and vague enough to describe this sound of rock might just be “British.”

The band closed out with the lead track from Cedars, “Almost the Same,” the only track of theirs to have a video, which the band is pleased to have seen on MTV2. They are optimistic about breaking into American music, and if this single is any sort of barometer, their chances look pretty good. Almost half the audience knew all the words to this insanely catchy tune, and the other half was no less into it. If anybody was new to Clearlake, it seemed like this song alone—at the end of this stunning set—would be enough to convert them. The band knows this and is happy. When asked about what they would want to say to their American audiences, James Butcher spoke for the band to their unanimous agreement: “We’re gonna get you.”

—Staff writer Christopher A. Kukstis can be reached at kukstis@fas.harvard.edu.