Reviews
Dec 30, 2021
By Matthew Berlyant
Part of Merge’s reissue series for the seminal and influential New Zealand group The Clean, this came out on the same day as the long-awaited reissue of their 1981 debut 7-inch, the New Zealand Top 20 hit “Tally Ho.” By later in 1981, they had already completed and released the oddly-titled Boodle Boodle Boodle 12-inch EP, five songs of jangly indie-pop far more advanced than the comparatively primitive rush of “Tally Ho.” More
Dec 29, 2021
By Matthew Berlyant
Merge has been slowly but surely reissuing the back catalog of Dunedin, New Zealand’s incredible The Clean since the 2003 release of the two-CD Anthology compilation introduced American indie rockers to the weird, wonderful world of the brothers David and Hamish Kilgour (on vocals/guitar and drums, respectively) and bassist Robert Scott, who would later go on to start The Bats, another crucial and important Flying Nun band. More
Sep 14, 2009
By Evan Rytlewski
The Clean is a band whose members have no sense of time. It can take them years, and sometimes even the better part of a decade, to release a new album—their first full-length didn’t arrive until 1990, a full 12 years after forming in New Zealand—and their records pay little credence to the era that spawned them. Their organ-laced, ramshackle early pop singles were like little else from the punk period, and their latest, Mister Pop, is similarly divorced from modern indie-rock, suggesting an alternate reality where The Feelies and Galaxie 500 never broke up. More
