The new album from James Clarke Five, Parlour Sounds, out now on The Beautiful Music, is as fine a record as you're gonna find this summer. The sort of thing that there's still time to crank up as the days are long and the sun is hot, the long-player is full of the sort of throwback charms that should please fans of The Style Council and The Blow Monkeys, and even XTC.
"Under My Skin", for example, is peppy, and the kind of bright radio-friendly pop that Weller and Roddy Frame pursued in the mid-Eighties, while "There's a Rainbow" is even better, flashes of Cast and Ocean Colour Scene peeking through the seams here. The Liverpool-based Clarke plays most of the instruments here, a fact which makes something like "The Redemption of Casper Green" all the more impressive. The cut, a distant cousin to stuff from Boo Radleys and High Llamas, is elegant and precise chamber pop, as is the shorter "Theme from 'The Main Chance'", a piece from an imagined film, perhaps, that sounds a tiny bit like early tracks from The Divine Comedy. Elsewhere, "What Do You Know About Ray?" and "Just a Smile" are nice straightforward strummers, the sorts of things that echo Teenage Fanclub a tiny bit. Lots of Parlour Sounds feels familiar, and I think that should make this an easy record to embrace for those who are perhaps not familiar with James Clarke yet.
Parlour Sounds is out now via The Beautiful Music.
More details on James Clarke Five via the official website, or the official Facebook page.