By rights, CLAYHILL shouldn't work. Featuring a core trio of self-confessed folkie/ Beth Orton collaborator Ted Barnes, hardline jazzer/ ex-Red Snapper man Ali Friend and enigmatic, introspective frontman Gavin Clark who broadly represents the singer/ songer tradition, they read like a disparate bunch on paper.
Yet, put this discerning nucleus in a room together and it's a case of the sum being far greater than the parts. Indeed, while the rustic warmth of the band's excellent introductory mini-album "Cuban Green" remains one of the year's superior calling cards, "Small Circle" is the debut album proper where Clayhill gloriously fulfill the promise.
Depth, soul, intrigue, warmth and world-weariness: they're all here and wrapped in a coat of many musical colours. Initially, "Small Circle" finds Clayhill coming on in strident, upbeat form, with the opening duo of "Alpha Male" and recent single "Northern Soul" introducing a catchy, unashamed pop streak hitherto only previously hinted at on "Cuban Green." The former opens with skronky samples and loops, but flourishes into a darkly effective stomper, with magnificent trumpet serenades and a wonderfully sardonic vocal from Clark, while "Northern Soul" features in the Shane Meadows short film of the same name and finds Clayhill exhibiting a confident, strutting edge and an immediacy that's intoxicating.
This new-found boldness continues through tracks like "Human Trace" - where Barnes' percussive guitar, the jaywalking bassline and Tim Weller's ineffably funky drums underpin Clark's fabulously tremulous vocals and the track's moody, neo-psychedelic edge - and "Grasscutter": the immortal story of a diligent Peruvian gardener who cuts his lawn with nail scissors. This latter makes a welcome return from the mini-album, and its' deliciously anthemic feel is spurred on by a tremendous string and horn fanfare the Tindersticks would approve of.
Which isn't to say Clayhill have mislaid the introspective, organic warmth that's their trademark, either. Indeed, "Small Circle" is equally effective when the band slow it down and smoulder. For instance, try the yearning "Moon I Hide" or the abject melancholy of the resolutely downbeat "Afterlight", where Gavin chokes back the sadness and sings "Today's darkest cloud was once filled with light." Never less than affecting, these songs - and the deceptively pretty "Even Though" - are nonetheless riddled with a dignity that's rare in this modern age and you want to return to them time and again.
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Musically, "Small Circle" is damn near immaculate. Clark and Barnes bring an inherent songcraft that ensures maximum emotional impact, while Ali Friend lays a subtle and propulsive rhythmic foundation throughout. He's as inventive as Jah Wobble and works beautifully in conjunction with Tim Weller's inventive, breakbeat-inspired drums, which are becoming another Clayhill hallmark. Weller is a respected session guy (see also Black Box Recorder and Divine Comedy), but let's hope Clayhill can hang onto him, as he brings an important dimension of his own.
All the participants rise to the challenge on - for me - the album's two key tracks. The first, "Rushes Of Blonde", finds Barnes' frail guitar hook coloured by a cello drone, pulsing loops and one of Clark's ghostliest vocals. It contains a fearsome beauty and the way he dispatches the lines "don't forget that you are fiction, a scar across my space" never fails to get your reviewer's hairs standing on end. This song is a slow, complex seduction, but it's possibly bettered by "Mystery Train", which has a minimal, spectral presence few others (except maybe Mark Holis) can compete with and is all the more poignant for it.
Clayhill have plainly had the emotional stuffing knocked out of them a good few times along the way, and we're not likely to see them competing with the likes of the spotty herberts 'gracing' the NME'S tabloid-style covers, but that was never the point. They are an important band who make remarkable and instantly recognisable music and the ripples from their "Small Circle" will steadily widen.
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