CLARENCE CLARITY - Vanishing Act Part II: Ultimate Reality

Clarence Clarity doesn't like doing things by halves. Completing, three years on, the diptych kicked off by his EP "Vanishing Act", the 39-year-old Londoner delivers a concentrated 37 minutes of hyperpop, funk and rock, splashed with a sound palette so oversaturated and fragmented that it makes even Prince's wildest outbursts look restrained by comparison. If in 2015, for debut album "No Now", the watchword was hypnagogic pop, today it's clear that the musician's horizon is (and perhaps always was) decidedly hyper: the voice is filtered, distorted, the sound is oversaturated and vividly colourful; and yet there's an attention to harmony, to songwriting and to detail that is a rarity for the genre.

Across the album's 10 tracks, Clarence Clarity blends kaleidoscopic synth-funk, rock grit and soul interludes, with the carefree nonchalance of bedroom pop but a production mastery that holds its own against the most progressive edges of current R&B/soul (KNOWER, mk.gee, Hiatus Kaiyote).

Every track is a surprise, a showcase of sounds that play with nostalgia and modernity: "The Greatest Living Musician, Found Dead" is an adrenaline rush, able to fuse hard rock guitars from the Eighties, emo-pop vocal inflections, and disorienting interruptions of found sounds. Hints of a teenage diet of MTV blend confidently with the clearest pop melodies and sudden about-turns: "What Year Is This?!?! JFC" and "Old King, The World Moved On" recall the hyper-commercial R&B of Backstreet Boys and *Nsync, but combined with scratchy tones and a bite that transfigures the cliché. With "Allatonceness", it moves from a nursery-rhyme bubblegum-pop to an explosive chorus, before throwing itself into a guitar solo that vanishes out of nowhere into the fade out.

The compositional vein is bold, brazen, even "forbidden". Take for example the big ballad "Guinevere", which closes the record on late-Eighties syrupy tones: its languid atmosphere is built up, made elegant by a classy passage on the minor fourth, before it gradually slips into a liquid, disorienting coda fuelled by futuristic key changes.

In "To Be A Bat", the contrast is subtle but disruptive: a funky little guitar line slotting in between dark, heavy synth bass lines. And in "Playing Our Parts", Clarence throws a rather spooky-tinged chiptune passage into the middle of exuberant boyband hooks, with falsettos flirting playfully with Max Martin's brand of pop.

Hilarious, cheeky, madcap, yet refined even in its most tightrope-walking choices, "Vanishing Act II: Ultimate Reality" is a contagious, galvanising sonic adventure, capable of stunning and entertaining with every new listen.

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07/11/2024