The Clientele's August release, Minotaur, is a mini-album featuring eight pleasant dreams with the odd angle of peril. It's an approach the London band perfected on last year's Bonfires on the Heath, a winsome though vaguely troubling affair in the “thinking/feeling” mode, sketched across the halcyon days of trad English folk, the band's bossa nova leanings and some of the most serenely Donovan-like '60s pop in recent memory. Draped in tremolo guitars and a provocatively heady surrealism courtesy of poet/composer/singer Alasdair MacLean, these songs are classic jewels, resolutely unfashionable in their emphasis on mood and melody, aided by the exquisite ornamentations of pianist/violinist Mel Draisey. Just in time for the fall season — watch the leaves slowly drift to the ground.

Sat., Sept. 11, 2010

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