It's good.
Cleft and I go back to 2013 when I went to the first iteration of ArcTanGent festival which was, as I reported back in 2014 (with fixed link to the line-up for that year):
Last year I went to
ArcTanGent Festival, a predominantly math rock festival held in a field at a farm near Bristol in south-west England. I couldn't believe it existed when I was told about it - it's like someone looked in my head and pulled out all the bands I wanted to see then stuck them on the line up and judging by the atmosphere it was the same for everyone else there. It was a real celebration for a nerdy music that doesn't traditionally draw big crowds and seeing members of the bands that were playing hanging around the campsite and watching the other bands was really cool. A total contrast to bigger festivals like Leeds and Download that I'd been to in previous years.
As it turns out that's still my most recent music festival thanks largely to parenthood but that's not the point. The point is that Cleft were playing an early afternoon slot on the third stage which means that even at the nerdy math rock fest they weren't the biggest of deals, at the time they only had a pair of EPs under their belts - one for each band member - so that made sense. They were dead good though. Loads of energy and stage presence for a two-piece with superb chemistry and timing as they shifted between tempos and meters and threw in some other cool shit.
Anyway, this album came out a few months later and before I nominated it I hadn't listened to it for a while but I have now and y'know what, I think it holds up. The riffs are good and the drums are good and really that's all I'm looking for. Some bits I like:
The way they lock in for the outro to 12-Second Panda with the chugs and blaps.
Weird guitar tone in the middle of Tamed Beests.
All those drum fills in Alec Baldwin's Hair, mainly the one at 1:20-1:24.
He took the snare off for the intro to Gutter Brush which is a nice touch. Big triplet fills at the end too.
Ghost Thighs starts with what I think of as a classic Cleft riff, joyful but wobbly. I think this is my favourite song on the album. I like the way the drums switch between floating on a breezy 4/4 and matching the rhythm of the guitar. The natural harmonics in the clean section are lovely.
What if, though. What if an elephant turned up in the bar room. That'd be wild. There's a vocal track on this one. Technically not a song by a duo so I'll skip over it but if I was to comment I'd say it's a good song, more direct and aggro with a genuinely heavy outro compared to the other material on BOSH! but I'm not commenting so I won't say that.
The intro to Drop A Bastard is a bit Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, right? I'm not against it.
Buffet Remorse is, to me, a good song title. I know that feeling well and it feels like the wistful guitar chords that open the song. The rest of it is more Classic Cleft discarding riffs and beats with abandon because they know there's another pile of them right round the corner.
I forgot to make any notes about the last two songs because I was enjoying them too much. There's a sweet pinch harmonic in Hostage, that's the main thing you should know about it.
I'm going to end where I started which is ArcTanGent festival. Cleft went on to become essentially the house band over the few years they were operational but sadly Dan, the guitarist, was struck down by a brain tumour in 2016 which ended up being terminal. This is a video from the last time they played the fest to a much bigger crowd than the one I was part of a few years earlier:
and in 2019, the after Dan's death, there was a tribute performance to Dan which culminated in the incredible spectacle of around 20 guitarists on stage together blasting out a D chord:
