Tara Clerkin Trio – Somewhere Good
With a sound rooted in Bristol's sonic DNA, Tara Clerkin Trio return with their most assured record to date
Since emerging from Bristol's experimental scene, Tara Clerkin Trio have specialised in making music that refracts familiar melodies into something eerily new. Lake Walk opens the record like the title screen of an 8-bit videogame you swear you played before, Space Echo and clarinet sketching a landscape somewhere between The Legend of Zelda and a half-formed dream. It's an invitation to press start, accept the quest and let the album guide you through shifting worlds of jazz-folk, avant-pop and trip-hop.
Lazy Daisy suspends time entirely, Clerkin's unhurried vocals drifting over a hazy dub bassline, its chorus poised somewhere between lullaby and daydream. Meanwhile the loose drums, plodding bass and haunting vibrato of Ups & Downs gives the record a smoky jazz club warmth, whilst the title track locates the album's emotional centre: looping piano and vibraphone rhythms turn hypnotic as Clerkin sings of leaping fields and falling leaves, her voice calm, distant, almost dissociative.
Elsewhere, Slow Island turns the album's blurred nostalgia toward something more concrete, a hometown hollowed out by gentrification rendered in the faded language of trip-hop and dub. Tumbling through primary-coloured melodies and toy-box percussion, Movin' On closes the album on a note of childlike wonder as reality gradually flickers into focus.
Listen to: Lazy Daisy, Slow Island, Somewhere Good