London dreampop quartet The Clientele’s new LP Bonfires on the Heath is a soft focus, slow shutter patchwork of autumn-hued dreamscapes and wood-scented October sunsets. Their first LP since 2007’s Suburban Light, Bonfires on the Heath is teeming with spectres, phantom choirs, disconnected voices in fields, haunted nights, and psychedelic sonic flourishes. According to lead singer/songwriter Alasdair MacLean the album is “about watching yourself disappear,” – inspired by an incident where LSD was slipped into MacLean’s drink and he subsequently experienced dissociative feelings in a South London park. The mood of the album is warm yet melancholic, pastoral yet elegant. It is hazy, painterly and illuminated by dusty slats of light. According to MacLean, The Clientele “won’t play a folk song, we’ll play a Peter Blake painting of a folk song.”

MacLean’s gossamer soft voice paired with the plaintive strings, reverberating guitar, honey-warm brass fanfares, and elegant piano solos culminate in the signature ethereal 60’s pop sounds that have come to define The Clientele over the course of their decade-long recording career. Despite no drastic stylistic departures, Bonfires on the Heath is easily the band’s most gorgeous and masterful work to date (and perhaps their last.) There are no highlights. No filler. Each song is woven and browned to perfection. The lyrics are romantic and haunted. On “Harvest Time,” like some surrealist Coleridge poem “Bats from the eaves go shivering by/Scarecrows watch the verges of light/I hear a choir on the heath at night/But no one’s there.” On the psychedelic high-energy rocker “Sketch” MacLean whispers off 25 seemingly unrelated words that ultimately and uncannily define the album:Bandstand, Dummy, Bells, Sheaves, Glass, Canary, Diorama, Cutlery, Abridgement, Spectre, Taxonomy, Moors, Construct, Sunlight, Horse, Transience, Cedar, Phenomena, Watcher, Ribbon, Bonfire, System, Heath, Sketch, (and once again) Bandstand.

Bonfires on the Heath was released on October 6 by Merge Records. Click “Read More” to hear “Harvest Time.”