Clemens is an experimental, rafter-shaking rock band from Akron, Ohio, that filters off-beat instrumentation, left-of-center lyrics and dense atmospherics through conventional pop structures. Painstakingly recorded over four years and through fairly chaotic circumstances (a guitarist in Iraq, a singer in Brooklyn, a bassist in law school), "Parting Waves" is their highly anticipated debut full length.
In an era where albums are cut up into singles and digested piecemeal by iTunes and the internet, Clemens have done something rather remarkable: They've made a bona fide album that flows from start to finish. Loosely based on a novel idea by singer Bishop, the lyrics detail the story of two writers--an older novelist desperate for a bestseller, and a teenage boy with a manuscript too promising to pass up--who collide with an odd cast of characters over the course of three weekends in New York City. "Parting Waves" is unabashedly ambitious, sprawling and self-indulgent, cribbing from a wide range of eclectic influences: the scope and paranoia of Radiohead, the stadium-sized bombast of U2, the glitch of Aphex Twin, even a little Refused and Burial thrown in for good measure. It's also chock full of the hooks and melody of mid-'90s indie rock, sure to please those of us who cut our teeth on Knapsack, Sunny Day Real Estate and "Static Prevails" era Jimmy Eat World. "Parting Waves" is greater than the sum of its influences, though, the result of four very different individuals pouring their blood and sweat into a passion project.
More than anything, "Parting Waves" is the sound of a band making the album they've been dying to make for nearly a decade.
partingwaves.com
