My parents just visited me for the first time since moving to Chicago, the suburbs of which my mom grew up in. So, naturally, there were the obligatory pictures of uncles and aunts. But the one shot that really struck me was taken of my parents in front of my mom's childhood home. The frame is off-centered, with the house occupying the right half, and my squinting parents, dwarfed by a large pine behind them, occupying the left half. Due to some malfunction with the camera, the image is fuzzy and the colors are burned out. It looks like it was taken thirty years ago.

Suburban Light, I imagine, would have provided the ideal soundtrack to my mother's return home-- an experience as removed as it is intimate. For this album is much like that warm, hazy picture: even though I know its collection of 13 songs were recorded between 1997 and 2000-- half of them released on various UK seven-inches-- they sound authentically 60's to the point of inducing incapacitating nostalgia.

The fingerprints of the Clientele's American debut, 2000's A Fading Summer EP, are all over this Suburban Light: an unchallenging bassline and drumbeat; a slightly out-of-tune guitar; the occasional tambourine; and Alasdair Maclean's breathy, distant vocals about "nightingales," "summer," and, when words just aren't suitable, some doo-doo-doo's. As you might imagine, the Clientele, like Galaxie 500-- whom they resemble, minus the exceptional guitarwork-- make daydreaming music.

Occasionally, the Clientele pick up the pace. "We Could Walk Together" offers some jangly guitar reminiscent of the Byrds. (Yes, even the Byrds could be considered "upbeat" by the Clientele's standards.) Maclean's vocals remain euphonious throughout "Joseph Cornell," but he seems a little more excited about whatever it is he's saying. And the skippy drumbeat of "From a Window" provides a nice change. But these are all subtle differences.

Every song here is a musical drift. Every song here discusses rain, or morning, or some other lazy, reflective moment in life. Every song here often sounds the same. But it's a pleasant song. Admittedly, the rating above was much lower for the first few listens because I didn't hear Suburban Light during the right moments. On last listen, I was driving home from work late on a Sunday night, exhausted as I floated down empty streets past bright lights and closed gas stations. Only then did the Clientele seem worth listening to. It's like flipping through a photo album: you won't often do it, but when you do, you'll be saddened by the truth that everything constituting your life is behind you. And yet this somehow also provides indescribable contentment.

-Ryan Kearney