Clearlake cries and complains like a child left parentless in an empty playground. This can dupe the casual listener; a certain beautiful and gray parochialism, the echoing drainage of an unholy
Aphex Twin alliance, a lengthening series of harmonica-flecked, soaked-campfire anthems -- yet truncated by a frontman who repeatedly mistakes
the Smoking Popes for
Morrissey. It really is quite what both separates
Clearlake from their peers as well as circumvent any of their apparent potential. Like "Let Go" with its wayward rendition of James' "Island Swing," Jason Pegg guards the band from any of the interesting atmospherics with his deep nasal whine, offering Ferris wheel triteness instead of much-needed immorality. For all intents and purposes,
Lido sounds like most any other British indie guitar band of 2001: muffled, characterless, and so desperate to rescue music back from the clutches of sanitized boy bands and U.K. garage compilations that it repeatedly sees the tiniest of innovations as shoe-store gimmickry.