Clientele, The - The Violet Hour (2025 Reissue)

2003’s The Violet Hour was, and remains, one of the indie-pop trio’s most vital statements: a lush invitation to their underground. On their second album, they created a deeper, more mysterious sound, whereby their sharply realised motif of 60s psychedelia and modern fuzz-pop took on inflections of jazz within their spacious atmospheres. 

The Clientele stretch the early evening of The Violet Hour out infinitely, manipulating the structured time of the pop song to capture place, mood, stray thoughts, disappointments, potential, and, above all, longing. It is a shimmering jewel of a record, its languid melodies and reverb-drenched choruses at once sublime and tragic, its hazy, dreamlike discursions at once recalling the warmth of a favourite record played over a midsummer rainstorm while yearning for the mist-veiled future of a yet unwritten night. 

FFO: Yo La Tengo, The American Analogue Set, Galaxie 500, Sparklehorse, Bedhead, Smog, Destroyer