| Member Since | 2/27/2006 | | Band Website | http://www.allenclapp.com | | Band Members | Allen Clapp, Harmony Rocket, Fender Rhodes, Roland Space Echo, Lots of Reverb | | Influences | The Weather, A.E. Housman, McCartney, George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland, Edgar Poe, William Blake, Al Stewart, Page & Plant, Taupin & John, McDonald & Giles, Goffin & King | | Sounds Like | At long last, Something Strange Happens collects all of the odds and ends of the first decade of Allen Clapp's recording career. Gathering long out of print 7" singles, contributions to compilations, demos, and two new songs, this 17-track compilation isn't the usual ephemera, but an essential addition to Clapp's canon.
The Bay Area-based singer/songwriter only managed two albums in the 1990s, 1993's One Hundred Percent Chance of Rain by Allen Clapp & His Orchestra and 1997's Square by the Orange Peels (the band Clapp formed with his wife, Jill Pries, on bass and a high-school buddy, ex-Mummies leader Larry Winther, on lead guitar), but both were minor classics equally prized by the D.I.Y. twee pop kids and power pop fans. The title track of this collection appeared on both (it's here in the original version from One Hundred Percent Chance of Rain), and it remains one of Clapp's finest achievements. . .
Clapp's self-effacing liner notes amusingly document the slow disintegration of the four-track cassette machine these songs were recorded on, and indeed, there's a greater lo-fi fuzziness here than on the pristinely recorded Square or even the relatively clean-sounding homemade effort One Hundred Percent Chance of Rain. Throughout, however, Clapp's genial sunniness and knack for clever indie pop hooks remain constant.
--Stewart Mason, ALL MUSIC GUIDE
| | Record Label | Bus Stop, March, Four Letter Words, Elefant | | Type of Label | Indie |
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