Tara Clerkin Trio - In Spring (World of Echo)

Bristol’s Tara Clerkin Trio further recombine outsider downtempo pop, soundsystems and forward-thinking jazz on In Spring for World of Echo

Tara Clerkin Trio’s self-titled debut was one of those records I almost missed. The only reason it didn’t make an appearance in our albums of 2020 was because I hadn’t heard it yet, but a very late in the year restock at Monorail fixed that for me. The album’s unique (and uniquely Bristolian) recombination of outsider downtempo pop, soundsystems and forward-thinking jazz was intoxicating. Follow-up In Spring for World of Echo’s label is at once shorter in length and more expansive in imagination. Space remains a vital element throughout.

There’s breathing room from the outset, with the almost two minutes of solo piano at the opening of “Done Before” beautiful in its minimalism. Clerkin’s half-sung words float up into the music: “Your eyes reflect the sky / Only half the time / Does it feel easy?”; reflective rather than cryptic. Strings and wind instruments are gradually employed, with the piece’s organic growth evoking disparate practitioners such as Albert Alan Owen and Angel Bat Dawid. “Night Steps” also starts with piano, but operates under a different mode, the keys cut-up and looped into off-kilter segments. It’s here that the Bristol sound, apparent on their debut LP, reveals itself again: beats crunching and reverberating with bass, hazy song filling the room and dub manoeuvres echoing in the spaces between. Most definitely one for the heads.

Keeping things running deep, instrumental cut “Memory” brings Bristol outsider sounds (Movietone, Crescent) up against that of Chicago experimental jazz (the International Anthem label) which, considering how naturally it is executed, makes all the sense in the world. With an outro that burns off beats worthy of a 1994 Mo’ Wax compilation, “Memory” is another fine example of this trio effortlessly joining the musical dots. It’s then left to the title track to pull the threads together. In Spring may clock in at a little over twenty minutes, but it has living layers which many more exhaustive records can only aim for. Thus “In Spring” itself feels as if it is keyed into the natural order of things, arriving at the end to bring in the new. Like the season of the record’s title, Tara Clerkin Trio continue to blossom miraculously.

Tara Clerkin Trio Bandcamp

World of Echo Music