In the course of listening to Clearlake’s second LP, “Cedars,” over the past few weeks, a vague portrait of the band began to paint itself in my mind. Listening to songs with such evocative titles as “Can’t Feel A Thing,” “I’d Like To Hurt You,” “Come Into The Darkness,” and “We All Die Alone,” I pictured a group of disillusioned young Brits who were just as apt to pick up the razorblade as the guitar. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for the cheerfully articulate lads from Brighton to shatter my naive preconceptions.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with the band backstage at the Pageant for a few minutes between their sound check and their 8:00 set to talk about “Cedars,” their US tour, and their soon-to-be recorded follow-up.

Cadenza: How long have you guys been playing together as Clearlake?

David Woodward: As this collection of people, we’ve been together for 18 months, but we were playing with a different drummer prior to that…we’ve been playing for about, wot, six, seven years?

Sam Hewitt: That long? Wow.

Jason Pegg: 1995 was the first real gig, so, that’s five years, and then…

SH: But Clearlake didn’t exist until, like ’99…

JP: Really? ’98, I reckon…

DW: You can find something in there…a quantity of years.

Cadenza: What are some of the differences between touring the US vs. Europe?

DW: I’d have to say that I prefer it here. We’re being looked after extraordinarily well by wonderful people, for example, Mama D [Dorion, Clearlake's tour manager] here. And also, every venue we go to, every city we go to is completely new to us, and they’re all amazing places…

Jason Pegg: There’s that thing about…driv[ing] along in the wilderness, farmland, for ten hours, and then all of a sudden on the horizon you see the skyline of an amazing place, that’s just glittering and huge and kind of fascinating.

SH: And I actually think people are a bit more into it here as well.

Cadenza: What are your goals for this tour?

DW: Obviously we’re pushing the record ["Cedars"], because it’s been out here for, wot, 6 months? It’s just about hopefully making a little bit of an impression so that we can come back again.

SH: Actually another goal has been…we’ve been playing quite a lot of songs off our next album. And so we’ve been working those through so they’re ready to record when we get back, and they’re now pretty tight.

Cadenza: I want to talk for a bit about your lyrics on “Cedars”. For me, there are some songs where I can’t tell whether the lyrics are a kind of tongue-in-cheek parody of human nature, or your disturbingly honest portrayal of it.

JP: Yeah, I really like writers who are kind of…I really like Randy Newman, who gets into so much trouble because he writes songs from the point of view of bigots, racists and slave traders, and psycho politicians. I wouldn’t like to take it that far, and actually, some of the things that are quite dark aren’t really ironic, they’re real, but they’re only talking about what every person at the extremes has going on with them…that doesn’t really manifest itself, because we don’t deal with everything that we think about.

SH: That phrase disturbingly honest sums it up, really.

JP: I think it’s good to bring these things out in the open, because writing a song is nothing. You can either write out how you feel about someone, or you can physically go and cut their head off. And it’s much better to do it in song, because it’s just a song. I mean, you know, I don’t write anything about wanting to cut somebody’s head off. I’m talking about just being spiteful to people.

Cadenza: So what can a Clearlake fan expect from your next offering?

JP: A dirty pop record. A psyche rock record.

DW: That sounds good. I’m looking forward to that.

JP: There’s some odd stuff…there’s some sound collage things, and quite a bit more guitars. The songs on “Cedars” were quite slow, and a lot of the music we’re working on is more rock-pop songs…Actually, I want to talk about one of the new sounds on the record…I’m playing a guitar in which all the strings are tuned to the same low E note, and then it goes through a harmonizer that Sam plays on a keyboard, and into a guitar amp.

SH: It’s really kind of like, he plays the rhythm, I play the notes.

Cadenza: How about the overall mood of the record?

JP: It’s going to change, it’s not as miserable and introspective. It’s more a celebratory…

Toby May: It’s going to make people boogie, isn’t it Jason?

JP: Yeah, that’s it. Swell. [Sarcastically] A sex-jam.

Jason Pegg: vocals, guitar
David Woodward: bass, keyboards
Sam Hewitt: guitar, keyboards
Toby May: drums

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