“A wildly energetic converge of folk tradition and rock innovation” – Cincinnati City Beat.
www.clumsylovers.com
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The career of most bands follows a depressing, predictable course: the flame of initial promise; followed by great expectations; followed by swift decline and demise, brought about by internal and external pressures, arrogance, poor instinct, a loss of the naive charm that marked the band as special in the first place, or all of the above. You, the audience, have heard the story, read the best-selling biography, and seen the major motion picture time and time again.
So it comes as no small surprise that The Clumsy Lovers ten years and over 1,500 live performances deep are only now poised to achieve the creative and popular breakthrough of their lives. Without ever having courted or discouraged success, the happy-go-lucky Vancouver quintet has made an album that expertly walks the tightrope between tradition-minded roots music (“Raging bluegrass Celtic rock,” a reviewer once said) and sparkling modern pop. |
In trying to please no one but themselves, The Clumsy Lovers have conceived a collection of songs that may prove to please damn near everyone.
“We’ve been a band for a long time, and we’ve never really imposed any kind of musical restrictions on ourselves,” says bassist and band spokesman Chris Jonat. “It’s really just, ‘Whatever happens, happens.'"
Smart Kid is the Clumsy Lovers’ seventh album, and second for Nettwerk Records. Like its acclaimed predecessor, After the Flood, it was made in collaboration with producer John Webster, who encouraged the band to approach the studio with a more adventurous spirit. The band has long felt at home on any stage, whether in front of 50 raucous patrons at a roadhouse or thousands of music-lovers at a festival or concert hall. But the band used to view the studio as a necessary evil ? a domain in which to make audio souvenirs for audiences to take away from Lovers live shows. Those older recordings were reasonably accurate documents of the band’s onstage sound, but they were hardly the sort of artifacts that would help take them to the next level. |
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