Sat March 8, Cafe Venus.
There's a time in every music fan's life that sticks out as a reference point, a defining moment that separates what came before from what would come forever after. I was 20 when R.E.M. released Reckoning, and though the band from Athens, Georgia, had taken fine first strides with Chronic Town and Murmur, it was Reckoning's unspun grace that influenced the way in which I would forever hear bands that came out of the South afterward. "7 Chinese Brothers," "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)," and "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" became the mold, setting a standard in one sense while signaling the end in another. Eight years would pass before R.E.M. would again release an album that had me stopping in my tracks to marvel at its simple elegance; Automatic for the People's "Everybody Hurts" and "Nightswimming" were invitations to look back as a way to look forward.
Georgia isn't the only thing that Clemente has in common with R.E.M., and it wasn't until I'd already connected the bands musically that I learned the two shared a home state. On Clemente's self-released, three-song CD, Now You Rather Gradually Let Go of my Hand, singer Jef Siler's voice resembles Michael Stipe's less dramatic earlier style, and the spare expanse of lyrics casting dual images--a hand with its thumb curled inside its fingers is linked with the end of a relationship ("She will curl like a hand returning to its cradle position/Am I in your backseat in a taxi drive condition?"); bad memories are paired with sad recollections ("Now you pack the book that last week was thrown gradually away")--show off a songwriter's mind in simpatico with his surroundings and resemble Stipe's intermittent ability to let songs bloom with resonance rather than wilt under obvious statement.
Happily, Clemente's tone tends toward vibrant pop, twinkling with acoustic and electric guitar and plenty of exuberant pedal steel. Though the band's songs may center on themes of unwanted change and leaving, a sense of lessons learned overpowers any sense of wistful longing, and I get the notion that Clemente, too, looks back to look forward. I look forward to hearing more from Clemente.
