Clogs is a joint project masterminded by The National’s Padma Newsome and Bryce Dessner that has flirted with post-rock and contemporary classical over three albums of mostly instrumental excellence, in particular 2006’s Lantern. Their fourth album ‘The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton’ however, marks a significant shift into vocal territory, with guest contributions from My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden to Matt Berninger, no stranger to his National bandmates. It is Worden though who, in On the Edge, provides the most sublime track on the album. A beautifully fragile vocal cuts through a gentle pastoral backing, evoking tinges of the similarly lovely North Sea Radio Orchestra, counter-intuitively declaring “I can tell this air ain’t fresh”. Au contraire.
Mp3 available here
Words: Carl Cullinane
