Join Home Alone on Thursday, April 2nd at 8am when he airs a recent interview with Bristol, UK based band, Tara Clerkin Trio, ahead of their Cafe du Nord show in SF on April 3rd.
Formed in Bristol UK in 2020, the Tara Clerkin Trio – as it somewhat democratically exists today, despite the singular authority implied by its name – consists of the titular Tara Clerkin, her partner Sunny Joe Paradisos, and Sunny’s brother, Patrick Benjamin.
With two extraordinary mini-albums – In Spring (2021) and On The Turning Ground (2023) – making a splash on London’s formidable World of Echo label in wake of their self-titled 2020 debut on Laura Lies In, the upcoming Somewhere Good LP is, in many ways, the band’s most realized work.
In running their usual gauntlet of idiosyncratic approaches, Clerkin & Co. color in and outside of compositional lines over the course of 40+ celebratory minutes – never wallowing, despite inherently somber subject matters of self-defeat, disease, displacement, restlessness, gentrification – allowing their arrangements and improvisations ample space and time to situate, stretch out, breathe, cross-pollinate, and ultimately take deeper hold on the listener’s imagination – all while somehow sounding more like themselves than ever before.
The trio’s sound possesses elements of avant-pop, modern classical, kraut-folk, audio verité, and indie rock. Imagine a Trish Keenan-fronted Faust, Adrian Sherwood at the mixing desk of If You’re Feeling Sinister, or – in expanding on our alternate reality – a world in which High Llamas cut a full-length for Warp Records with Andrew Weatherall on coffee duty.
The hazy, unmappable skyline-mirage of droning harmonium, upright bass, peculiarly accentuated wind instruments, acoustic guitar, hushed yet literally mighty keys combine to hypnotizing effect. The band may make underlying nods to jazz, sure, but it’s not appropriation, it’s that they have the actual chops to build it out. Beneath the janky samples and oddball percussive embellishment lies actually great drumming. Beyond the manipulated vocal witchery and woefully reflective plain-spoke moments are Tara’s subtly inspired melodies, sung with what might honestly be the glue to the whole crazy equation. A calming consistency throughout the otherwise unpredictably dynamic, boldly intuitive, uniquely British exploration of this (their own) universe in song.
