2018 Album Retrospective #9: Clarence Clarity - THINK: PEACE
Too often an artist's work will be carelessly described as being 'unique' or 'experimental' as a justification for why it should be listened to. Perhaps, then, it wouldn't be fair to expect all listeners to immediately take to English producer Clarence Clarity's debut album No Now, released back in 2015. That record was innovative, sure, but occasionally seemed to sacrifice musicality for the chance to push one more novel idea onto one's ears, as if a record over an hour long would somehow run out of time.
THINK: PEACE, by contrast, strikes a much clearer balance between ingenuity and enjoyment, largely due to tracks much more focused on pleasant grooves than obtuse experimentation. Clarence's signature take on glitch pop is always refreshing, of course, but to hear an record more focused on providing a consistent listening experience can only serve to appeal his music to a wider audience.
This is, of course, not an entirely surprising development. Clarence has spent the time since No Now dropping various singles, many of which appear on this album. But the new sound the public has slowly been led towards is in full force here, glitch pop and R&B being fused together with synth funk and other subgenres of art pop. But maybe that's just a roundabout way of saying that this album is undeniably fun to listen to.
After a short intro, the album begins with the track Adam & The Evil, which is thematically excellent both independently and within the album as a whole. Lyrically, Clarence sings in his trademark less-than-polished style, with biblical lyrics such as "The sins of our fathers/They start to add up". The strained vocals layer surprisingly well on top of a guitar-tinged synthetic beat, somewhat subdued but an effective tease that sets the groundwork for what is yet to come.
When that song seamlessly transitions into the next track W€ CHANG£, it soon becomes clear that not only is there no shortage of sticky synth riffs present here, but each musical moment continues to build off the last in an ever-growing mesh. As the album progresses, short motifs from previous songs appear briefly, making the album feel all the more like an organic, evolving experience.
From Naysayer, Magick Obeyer until Next Best Thing, Clarence keeps up a flawless stream of sticky grooves and hooks contrasted against slower, more melodic sections which often call back to melodies from previous tracks. The former track even provides the basis for the later cut SAME?, which is largely built off of reworked ideas from earlier in the album.
Even when departing from this formula to add something new, such as the solo string section on Vapid Feelings Ain't Vapid or the rap verse on Fold 'Em, THINK: PEACE never rests on its laurels for more than a minute. The first half of the latter track in particular marks not only a rare instance on here of lyrics dominating the production, but also features an incredible and instantaneously catchy hook.
Around this point on the album is where the pace begins to slow slightly, somewhat to its detriment: the second part of Fold 'Em is reserved for what amounts to little more than a lengthy, unnecessary outro. While Tru(e) Love is yet another high point with notable lyrics about love in the online age, the tracks following it are somewhat lethargic, and the closer 2016 bookends the album the same as the intro did: confusingly and abrasively.
Additionally, while Clarence does have an easily recognizable vocal style, it isn't always for the best reasons. Occasionally his tendency to come off somewhat whiny and awkward is to the detriment of the music, namely on Fold 'Em where it constantly threatens to derail the track from its synth-based funk.
To say THINK: PEACE is consciously trying for a more accessible experience may read like a condemnation, but in reality it is anything but. The clever ways in which this album creates such memorable synth grooves is a testament to both the talent and the progression of an artist who, in such a short span of time, has created and now refined his own unique sound. But that fact that it's such an incredibly catchy glitch pop record is nice, too.