I was going to include this song in the bike post I wrote the other week but it didn’t fit in with the tone of the piece, being rather more wistful and melancholy than that was and it’s such a lovely tune I wanted to ramble on about it a bit longer.

The Clientele always remind me of London, not just because they’re from there (though curiously I think they’re more popular in the States) but their records sound drenched in fog and drizzle with a blurry, impressionistic quality which evokes those fleeting moments that are so hazy and intangible they barely qualify as memories but still give you a nostalgic ache. Listening to them makes me think of shimmering reflections in the inky black pavement after a rainstorm, the half-light inside a smoky pub during the day, steamed-up cafe windows, clouds hanging low in a slate gray sky, a beautiful girl seen for only a second on a crowded tube train who you’ll think about all day, the musty smell of a tiny second-hand bookstore, a neon sign flickering above a doorway in a dark alley, dust particles dancing in shafts of sunlight streaming through net curtains, long shadows cast by the trees in Hyde Park at the end of a languid summers day, Chelsea Bridge all lit up at night seen from inside a train crossing the Thames into Victoria Station.

The lyrics of “Bicycles” alone are enough to set me adrift on memory bliss:

Bicycles have drifted through these leaves still wet
with rain
August now has faded in the silence of the rain
I remember one Sunday, riding in through the gate
Three balloons in a white sky, 1978

Playgrounds where we spent our days
Return within our dreams
What it is, it isn’t up to me
I’ve been driving in my car
On Sunday in the rain
And my life is slipping so away

But they sound even better when they sing them…

Download: Bicycles – The Clientele (mp3)
Buy: “Suburban Light” (album)