Clutch are back with their ninth studio album ‘Strange Cousins From The West’ and they’re sounding better than ever.
Their first release on their own label Weathermaker, ‘Strange Cousins’ features a rawer sound and one that the band absolutely wanted to put out.“More than anything it’s just a great feeling that whatever record we want to make is going to ultimately be what folks will find in record stores and on iTunes,” drummer Jean-Paul Gaster told Undercover. “No matter how much we try to say ‘my label is going to give me 100% artistic freedom’ or ‘my label is going to let me choose the artwork’ at the end of the day a label is a business that is trying to make money out of your music. We’ve been on enough labels to know that the reception can be quite cold for something that you’ve put your heart and soul into.”
The band’s first single ‘50,000 Unstoppable Watts’, but it’s not really a single in the “traditional sense that its sounding like something that is going to get popular on the radio,” says Gaster.
“In that respect I think what happens is that its the tune where our label manager thinks he’ll have the best shot at working at commercial radio. I can remember years and years ago we spent a lot of time trying to work out what one is going to be the single, but at the end of the day you’ve gotta let the guy do their job and it just so happens that our label manager John is also a radio guy and you’ve gotta let the guy do his job.”
One of the more interesting tracks on the new record is a cover of the 70s Argentinean blues band Poppo’s Blues’ song ‘Algo Ha Cambiado’.
“I don’t think they reinvented the wheel, these guys were just playing blues-rock,” Gaster explains. “But it’s really interesting that they were from Argentina and I always thought to myself ‘where were these guys coming from?’ I imagine coming from Argentina it wasn’t that easy to get a Muddy Waters record or whatever. That song sounded most like what we would play ourselves, but as we tried to learn it, it was really quite difficult.”
The band also manages to experiment with their instruments, which helps them keep their sound fresh after so long. Gaster explains with the song ‘Abraham Lincoln’, “That’s an interesting tune because lyrically the premise is the setting in which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and the story that happened thereafter, but that happens afterwards.
“It’s always music first and then lyrically we move in that direction. For me personally I was experimenting with a waltz kind of a feel and it just so happened that morning in my normal practice with Gene I just had that kind of a vibe. It’s kind of a march, but that lends a lot of heaviness to the sound, you can get a lot of riffs to sound heavy and once we worked out what the lyrics would be we sort of played up the march side of things.
“You always have to push the limits at what you know about the instrument. If you want to make an honest attempt at being a drummer then you have to study your instrument every day. With the drums, although it’s an ancient instrument, the idea of a drum kit is really a new thing and it really revolves around jazz and you have to have at least an idea of what it means to play jazz, to play time, to play a shuffle and all these elements that make up the drums as we know them today.”
Australian fans have a chance to check out this awesome new album from Clutch before they return. As Gaster said; “We’re planning on going back [to Australia] early next year. Maybe January, maybe February. I know that we’ve definitely gotta get down there and... ah I love Australia.”
In the meantime, check the band out across the States at the following shows with Baroness and Lionize:
JULY
9 - Bogart’s, Cincinnati, OH
10 - The Fillmore, Detroit, MI
11 - Kuma’s, Chicago, IL
12 - Pop’s, Sauget, IL
14 - House of Blues, Dallas, TX
15 - House of Blues, Houston, TX
17 - Sunshine Theater, Albuquerque, NM
18 - Marquee Theater, Tempe, AZ
19 - House of Blues, Las Vegas, NV
20 - Cane’s Bar & Grill, San Diego, CA
21 - House of Blues, Los Angeles, CA
22 - Regency Center, San Francisco, CA
23 - King Cat Theater, Seattle, WA
25 - Knitting Factory, Spokane, WA
26 - Wilma Theater, Missoula, MT
27 - Knitting Factory, Boise, ID
28 - Crystal Ballroom, Portland, OR
29 - Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, BC
31 - Flames Center, Calgary, AB
AUGUST
1 - Edmonton Events Center, Edmonton, AB
2 - Odeon Event Center, Saskatoon, SK
3 - Garrick Center, Winnipeg, MB
4 - First Ave, Minneapolis, MN
6 - Eagles Ballroom, Milwaukee, WI
7 - House of Blues, Cleveland, OH
8 - Sonar, Baltimore, MD
