Lazarus Clamp – How I Quit Being

Cleverlegs

Having first emerged thirty odd years ago in Leicester, as a lesser-known and more bucolic presence in the UK’s post-rock micro-boom, the longevity of Lazarus Clamp recently feels like it has followed the operational influence of chameleonic Chicago legends Eleventh Dream Day. Not in the sense that the band has had a major label dalliance to survive and evolve on from, but in the way that Michael Larkin and co. have latterly only come together to record when the songs, people, day-jobs, family commitments and logistics all allow — which can take literally years.

Whilst this comes with the added creative pressure of making hiatus-breaking studio statements that really count, the geographically-scattered quintet line-up of the last decade and a half – incorporating the aforementioned Larkin (vocals / guitar), Andrew Kingston (guitar), Huw McPherson (drums), John Parsons (bass) and Tom McClure (violin) – has chalked-up some of its finest work with 2009’s nimbly addictive Against Entitlement and 2015’s rousingly raucous The Bird Is Not The Metaphor long-players.

Therefore, the anticipation is high when it comes to 2024’s even more belatedly arriving How I Quit Being. With its eight songs written / recorded just before the pandemic and mixed / mastered during it, this collection may have taken its time to reach a vinyl and digital release, but there is a combination of looseness, freshness, urgency and warmth that is well suited in helping to wrap up this challenging and churning year on the planet, with uncanny prescience.

Although a slimmer and less widescreen set than its tremendous double-sized 2015 predecessor, the record still has a distinctive life-affirming character to command considered attention. Inside we find Larkin’s core compositions – full of knotty but lucid lyricism – stretched out with his bandmates into a variety of imaginative shapes.

Things begin brilliantly with “About Our Necks” soaring out as an obliquely infectious anthem, which simultaneously salutes Karate and mid-period Go-Betweens. Straight after that, we’re pulled through the juddering Jesus Lizard-meets-Minutemen punchiness of “After The Claps” and the imagined sound of something from Fairport Convention’s Full House being turbulently remade by Horse Stories-era Dirty Three that is “Archipelago” to unequivocally remind us of Lazarus Clamp’s stirring stormy side.

Through the six-minute midpoint of “You Are The Wolves” and the ensuing “Non-Migratory Birds”, we are given a meandering and relaxed breather, across some charmingly winding and off-map folk-rock backroads, ahead being treated to the twisty fIREHOSE charms of “Milk Fugue” and the angular yet rubbery turns of “Up With The Ghouls”. Proceedings fade out somewhat with the frazzled pastoral epilogue of “Relay”, with the fivesome perhaps subconsciously lamenting that we may have another long break before a sequel to How I Quit Being reaches the shelves.

Even if it doesn’t quite surpass the elevated heights of the aforesaid Against Entitlement and The Bird Is Not The Metaphor, this is still a reassuringly invigorating and highly likeable Lazarus Clamp long-player in own right. This listener will be patiently looking forward to what turns up next from the group at some point in the early-2030s then … though a follow-up a little bit sooner would, of course, be welcomed with open ears.

-Adrian-