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Dpreparing for part of their 2020 album, the Tara Clerkin Trio were interrupted by construction work taking place outside. The notes and screeching of the scaffolding were captured by the chord loop he was making on the childhood keyboard at the time. Instead of scrapping the record and starting over, they joined soft metal, and wanted to recreate the last song. They were able to use a clear video from a free modeling site, Tara Clerkin recalls, laughing. “We had to credit the person who recorded the words on handwritten notes.”
These fun accidents and spontaneous noises continue to make the Bristol-based band a breezy, collage-like experience. sound, which has delighted fans of underground music of all kinds (including jazz heads – despite the name, they emphasize that it is not a jazz group). That debut album has been reissued on a fourth and has released two acclaimed EPs since then. Walking somewhere between minimalist jazz, avant-pop and trip-hop, their dance music is born from hours of improvisation and layering. Their music wails, vibrates and wanders in strange ways around Clerkin’s dreamy vocals, crafted from an array of instruments he can’t quite play.
Like scaffolding, the found sounds that underlie the Tara Clerkin Trio’s music enhance their magical appearance: some steps here, some chimes there. Sometimes the band, made up of Clerkin, his friend Sunny Joe Paradisos and his younger brother Pat Benjamin, experimented with themselves, twisting and reworking old recordings. “The more you test yourself, the less examples you have to remove” (due to copyright) says Paradisos, with difficulty. “You just make it up.”
It’s interesting how their music sounds, even though they were only three (the previous group had eight members). “That’s normal, but the limit forces you to be creative,” says Benjamin, before Paradisos says: “It’s all the power of a loop pedal.
We are meeting in a library in Stoke Newington, north London, near where Clerkin and Paradisos live (Benjamin is still in Bristol). They are preparing to release their second album, Somewhere Better – their most popular record yet, and one that critics are already calling for a possible song of the year. Although it still has their signature sound of odd sounds (the nest, the wicker lamp), it feels like a step in a new direction: there are well-written notes and narratives, including words from Paradiso for the first time. On one track, he even lowers the loop pedal. “Like a real band,” Benjamin laughs.
The album arrives three years after their last EP, a period that has been full of challenges. After living in Bristol for 16 years, Clerkin and Paradisos lost their job in their rented house. They then moved to Liverpool to care for Clerkin’s ailing mother, a situation that forced the band to cancel a US tour and take a six-month break. Paradisos said: “That was the most difficult year that I think I will ever get through.”
Lurking job opportunities brought the couple to London, where they have been scrambling to make ends meet for the past six months, through petting, couchsurfing and hiding. He couldn’t ask questions today: “I have two new bosses texting me, like: ‘What’s up next week?'” says Paradisos, who also works as a groundskeeper. “I was like, I don’t know, because I have something really important going on at some point, and I can’t lose these jobs and not make money.”
The new album was created in similar extreme conditions, written and recorded between days on various tours, studios and Airbnbs. The final mix was done on a laptop at the New York Public Library, and the masters made their final flight from the airport in Cyprus. “It was a time when we were traveling like crazy,” says Benjamin. “Between this and working, it’s hard to find a time where it’s like: oh, we’re three days apart…
They laugh about it now, but that balancing act, combined with the village atmosphere, almost forced them to quit. “I feel like the smartest person in our situation would have stopped doing that a long time ago,” says Clerkin, only joking.
It’s all part of what Paradisos says is a “hostile environment for art” in the UK, something the group is still working towards, nearly a decade on. “It’s really rare to meet working artists, because basically there’s a rule that you have to do it and not get paid for 10 years,” Clerkin said. “Traveling three times a year or not, you won’t be able to get a steady job, but then the trip won’t pay you to live the rest of the time.”
Like their last two EPs, the album is coming out of East London record shop World of Echo. After the group spoke to several A&R people on the record, they confirmed that leading up to the production of the album – “it’s like paying off a loan”, says Paradisos. “If you give away that many rights, you won’t get another penny for your music.” Since then they have become friends with the people behind World of Echo, and work on a regular basis.
The new album captures some of these challenges: Lazy Daisy is on the verge of losing her job, while she quietly broods over grief. After that, Slow Island mourns the unknown and gentrification. But hope shines through, in the beautiful vocals, the melody, and Clerkin’s high-pitched voice. “Even though we faced a lot of challenges, we wanted to create something that was positive – something that recognized the pain honestly, but also offered the opportunity to move forward,” he says. “As we still do, even though we have been hating the blind life for many years.
