The recording project of poet and fiction writer Mike Young, Clementine Was Right serves a vehicle for sharing the stories lived and moods experienced while moving across great distances. Be it the physical distance of years spent wandering the four corners of the American landscape, or the spaces conjured through the very passing of time. The result, as captured on debut record Lightning & Regret, is a marbled blend of fondness and regret, an album that takes long glances back at the places left behind while always moving forwards with a sense of cathartic purpose.
March sees the release of Can’t Get Right With the Darkness, the second Clementine Was Right record. It promises to build upon the foundations of Lightning & Regret while pushing deeper into the wounds and wonders it discovers along the way. With a balance of indie rock and country sensibilities, the songs are at once more rugged and joyous than the previous album, leaving no emotion untapped as they aim to paint the most vivid version of each story possible. “A second record is for dancing even deeper and the different towns you do it in,” Young puts it, “the strangers you made along the way and the candles you don’t know how to hold.”
Latest single ‘Dreaming of Dancing in a Different Town’ takes this sentiment to heart, and serves as the perfect introduction to the Clementine Was Right sound. If the wistful tone is decidedly nostalgic, it is not the hazy nostalgia so often peddled. Rather these are memories with their teeth left intact, as vivid and painful as the moment they occurred. Fitting for a song, in Young’s words, about “the ache of naïve promises.” As he continues:
You start out flirting and trading clove cigarettes outside the laser tag place, and you end up running into someone years later and admitting you never understood why they were crying. You wanted to. You had a lot of plans. You jumped into the river at dawn. You haven’t forgotten any of them.
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Can’t Get Right With the Darkness is out in March and you can pre-order it now from the Clementine Was Right website.