At the last show of their recent tour, The Clientele left Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts with a little art of their own. Showcasing their milky, 60’s-style britpop off at a concert where everyone was sitting, the band got everyone on their feet, demanding an encore, and sending the band back home with an auditorium full of love.
The band pulled mostly from their albums, Strange Geometry and God Save The Clientele. Off of their newest one, “Bookshop Casanova”, “Somebody Changed”, and “Winter on Victoria Street” particularly stood out. Singer Alasdair MacLean kept an impressive level of energy up throughout the show. When he told the crowd that it wasn’t really Starbucks in their Starbucks cups, he playfully announced that it was keyboardist/violinist Mel Draisey’s the night before and she held up her water bottle.
Draisey also swapped roles with accompanying arranger, Louis Philippe, on several songs. While he played the keyboard, she was able to bust out her violin, creating a whole, five-piece sound that made each song even more lush.
The openers, Beach House, were another calm act that was both made for and surprised by the seated audience. The Remis Auditorium at the MFA was an acoustic dream for their mellow synthpop, as there was essentially no ambient noise around them. Singer Victoria Legrand did a nifty job of filling in the silence between songs off of their hazy self-titled debut.
