TARA CLERKIN TRIO - Somewhere Good

The Bristol band finally follows up the two EPs that filled the gap since their debut release; the Tara Clerkin Trio's proposition is an obstacle course, one that veers from abstraction toward a crooked physicality.
Trip-hop, downtempo and jazz attitudes are part of the group's DNA, and in this sense tie them closely to the local scene; yet there are many atypical and ingeniously creative elements that shift the axis toward a sound that's experimental, disjointed, fragile but above all disarming.

Faced with the crystalline beauty of "Somewhere Good"'s compositions, it's impossible to remain unmoved. Tara Clerkin's confiding voice bewitches even the most inattentive listeners, while the clarinet melds with the percussive textures, alternating ethereal sonorities with others of richer melodic body; at the same time dub, samples and electronics fill certain empty spaces without ever feeling intrusive.
None of this is easily pigeonholed, or at least not according to the usual standards by which much of contemporary production tends to be assimilated. The Tara Clerkin Trio's new album captivates through the modernity of its language, through a perfection that goes hand in hand with simplicity, and through the magical empathy that renders malleable material that isn't exactly easy to love on first listen.

Reinvention and reshaping of already familiar stylistic devices: this is the raison d'être of an album that even pokes fun at post-rock/jazz improvisation to create a hypnotic, obsessive soundscape, poised between psychedelia and inconsistency (“There Was A Nice Sunset”). With “Lazy Daisy” the band plays the card of the unintentional emotional earworm: the voice seduces the full-bodied bass lines, indulges their placid melancholy and instantly seals the bond with the wonders of trip-hop.
What escapes on first listen is the subtle experimental funk undertone of “Lake Walk”, or the hauntology attitude lurking behind the jazz dystonias of “Ups & Downs”.

I like to picture the new Tara Clerkin Trio album as an original chamber-music project where cross-contaminations act as a perpetual semantic trick. A parallel sonic universe where a handful of elements coalesce into a solid body only to dissolve again (as in the enigmatic, sensual “Silently”), or where pop is scratched by melodic and rhythmic counterpoints born of indie rock and dub (the alluring “Slow Island”). What remains constant is a decomposition, at times ethereal, that heightens the record's experimental nature (“There Was A Nice Sunset”), that doesn't sacrifice its jazz roots (the title track) and shifts the axis toward a Dadaist-tinged contemporaneity recalling the genius of Young Marble Giants (“Movin' On”).

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13/08/2026