'Bout four years back, CLEARLAKE were the coolest bunch living within that well-known 'London-on-Sea' we know better as Brighton. Not that they usually referred to themselves as a Brighton band per se, as they had this odd Lypton Village crossed with Arcadia kinda mythos about coming from a town called (wait for it) Clearlake, but they used it to good effect and also wrote the best songs about junk shops since The Auteurs.
Since that time, Brighton's put its' name to whole host of brilliant outfits from Chungking to Hush Collector to British Sea Power and we'd (well, I'd) tended to relegate Clearlake in our minds somewhat. However, their impending album "Amber" (January 2006 folks, get that extra money from Granny ready) reminds us they're still out there and trailer single "Good Clean Fun" suggests we should respect their continued existence.
Not that "Good Clean Fun" exactly lives up to its' title. It's considerably more abrasive and hard-edged than anything this long-suffering hack has previously heard from Clearlake, but its' cartwheeling drums, fuzzed-up guitars and Jason Pegg's strangely forlorn vocals (rather like the rest of the band had been building his biceps while he opted to remain the seven-stone weakling) work nicely in conjunction. It's the sort of thing where you can't exactly pinpoint why you like it, but you're intrigued enough to want to go back and figure it out. And that's usually a good sign.
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So there you have it. Clearlake are back and sounding like they may not countenance sand being kicked in their face any longer. Their hibernation was clearly more fruitful than most.
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