World In Delay - Tara Clerkin Trio Live
That feeling when you fall hard for something, as one of our favourite acts of the year swoop into our hearts late in the day
Welcome to a swift edition of LS, number 44 apparently. Rich Walker found himself at Manchester’s hidden Low Four Studio to watch Tara Clerkin Trio, mere days after discovering their extraordinary EP On The Turning Ground.
Nestled down the side of the Great Northern Railway Company’s Goods Warehouse on Manchester’s Deansgate is a lovely little hidden alley called ‘Deansgate Mews’ that houses a few independent eateries and bars, far from the ‘big night out from the suburbs’ bustle of it’s big brother a mere 50 yards away. Low Four Studios is located here, a recording studio/venue/bar that was somehow previously unknown to me. An intimate space, it’s a great addition to Manchester’s thriving live venue scene that has seen new openings spring up across town (think Canvas, New Century Hall), the opposite from the cost of living woes that seem to be shutting places down across the country.
I’m here to see Tara Clerkin Trio, a group I’d heard about just a week or so before. Fellow LS editor Connah Roberts has sent me a message about their new EP On The Turning Ground, and I’d seen both Boomkat and Tom Krell of How To Dress Well fame waxing lyrical about it - not bad arbiters of taste between them. I was immediately hooked. Their blend of dream pop, minimal jazz, improvisation, Arthur Russell, trip hop, a ‘caroline if they were having more fun’ kinda sound grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. It was all I wanted to listen to all week, and I ravenously consumed their slim back catalogue at the same time. Hailing from the Bristol scene, it’s clear that the city’s rich lineage from Portishead to Massive Attack have all left their mark, but for me it’s the Arthur Russell angle that really makes them shine.
Live they’re a dreamy proposition. Clerkin on keys and vocals and electronics, Patrick Benjamin on more keys and electronics and, em, accordion, and Sunny-Joe Paradisos on drums and cello combine effortlessly, as if in complete sync with each other, like a mycelia network communicating through unseen neural pathways to create deceptively simple music from what must be a complex matrix of sounds. It’s easy to get lost in the slowly building soundscapes of ‘Brigstow’ and ‘On The Turning Ground’, close your eyes and melt into the gentle groove, get slightly startled by the initial honks of a clarinet or the wheeze of the accordion, open them to see now there’s a cello in play adding drone to proceedings. It looks so effortless between the three of them, each swapping instruments during the course songs, laughing when something goes a bit awry (a buzzing synth, a cold wood instrument, a mistimed sample), but fully locked into the grooves they’re creating.
It’s a stunning ‘Marble Walls’ that really hits amongst this, probably their most straightforward song, and surely one of the best tracks of the year, it’s the only one with straight up vocals from Clerkin and it’s everything I want it to be and more. I cannot stop grinning, it’s making me so ridiculously happy. It’s a short and sweet gig, like the …Turning Ground EP, and I’m completely fulfilled by it. It’s a delight to ‘discover’ something you instantly fall so hard for, and serendipity when they happen to be playing your town that week too. It feels like everything for me and Tara Clerkin Trio was meant to be, and I’m so happy we’ve found each other.
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