the Clean Getaway

Format: CD.
Label: Merge.
Label reference #: MRG186.
TK Mailorder Reference ID: M10509
Approximate release date: August 21, 2001.
Genres: Rock/Pop

Price: $12.65 [Out of Stock]
List price: $14.97
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Track listing:

1. "Stars"
2. "Jala"
3. "Crazy"
4. "Golden Crown"
5. "Cell Block No. 5"
6. "E Motel"
7. "Twilight Agency"
8. "Poor Boy"
9. "Silence Or Something Else"
10. "Alpine Madness"
11. "Circle Canyon"
12. "Aho"
13. "Holdin' On"
14. "Reprise 1, 2, 3, 8, 4"
15. "Complications"

Twee Kitten review of Getaway
by Keith Mclachlan

There always seemed to be a horde of would-be trial lawyers willing to line up to prosecute Pavement for being Fall clones when in fact their claimant was ill-chosen, they should have, truth be told, been working for the musical incorporation known as the Clean. Pavement even admit as much claiming that 'Slay Tracks' is as much an homage to Kilgour/Kilgour/Scott as it is anything else. And here on just the fourth official full length of their 20 odd year career (there have been a few compilations as well) there is an almost nostalgic feel to a lot of the songs. On the last two records the mythical guitar of David Kilogur was set-aside and the brightly coloured tones of keyboards infused the songs with a melancholy, yes, but still buoyant sense of outwardness. Here the guitar is back, granted nothing approaches the otherworldly dissonance of say 'Getting Older' where one guitar sounds like eleven but most of the tracks are truly guitar led, scattered and muted mumble alongs. And the Pavement similarity is absolutely obvious which may turn out to be a bad thing after all, because this record lacks the considerable charms of the first three. It sounds slack, and it does make me wonder if maybe the boys are holding back their best ideas for their solo projects? Granted the last D. Kilgour record was a sham though I anxiously await his next early next year but what I mean is that perhaps they only bring the ideas they couldn't get to work on their own into the group setting. I've no idea how their writing works but I can imagine that surely someone like Phil Collins rarely brought his most bankable riffs to Genesis and it is easy to believe that Isobel Belle and Seabastian keeps her niceties to herself for while even her solo records are slight her B&S contributions fill us all only with dread so then might I also believe the same ethic works with the Clean. 'Getaway' then is mostly filler, half-baked ideas and only a few inspired moments of glee. It does seem terribly serious in spots, not something I am all to keen to receive on a Clean record. It's glub even. But it is still a Clean record and there have been far too few of them to go around and so we should rejoice, if perhaps only in whispers.



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