Reissued, Refracted: Suburban Light
I've felt lucky this summer to log some quality time with the vinyl reissue of the Clientele's Suburban Light. Some will allege nostalgia. Guilty as charged, but in my defense, I submit: Nostalgia for music that is itself nostalgic only serves to heighten and sweeten the effect. We find ourselves drifting backwards through the blue-black haze not only of the Clientele's channeling of the unremembered, indeed, unexperienced past--the sweet spot between Nick Drake's Bryter Layter and early-mid John Lennon in a Black Dog kind of mood--but also through the hazes of our own histories and corresponding layers of sentiment.Â
Me, I'm back in (my recollection of) August 2001, when my world and the world at large both looked and felt very different: at once bigger and smaller, and more mysterious through and through.Â