Album Review: Tristan Clopet’s Duende EP

Tristan Clopet & The Juice play the Hard Rock’s Ambassadors of Rock Battle of the Bands competition tonight at the Hard Rock Cafe inside the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida.

Band: Tristan Clopet & The Juice (www.myspace.com/tristanthemusic & www.tristanclopet.com)

Genre: Rock/Funk

Album: Duende EP

Sounds Like: Red Hot Chili Peppers/Blood, Sweat & Tears/Jeff Buckley

Simplicity is a beautiful thing.Rock n’ roll, and music in general, has a strange tendency to overcomplicate itself. I mean, how many times can you really sing about love, heartbreak, drugs, and the trials and tribulations of life? Ironically, it’s also those aspects that people relate to the most.

The thing I love most about Tristan Clopet’s Duende EP is that it heads straight to the point and cuts out any form of pretention (and anyone who knows Tristan personally can attest to him being the same way).  There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here; and maybe because we’re living in a world of “psychedelic-electronica-growl-metal-core-bass-beat” genres that an album that is nothing more then solid rock and roll stands out.

Even look at the song titles:

1. Your Love is a Drug
2. The End of an Era
3. Let it Go
4. Flowers in Bloom
5. Concrete Dreams
6. Oceans

Photo by Elizabeth Ferguson

Your Love is a Drug is a blistering testament to any man’s early-20’s women and relationship experiences. It is a funky rock song in the vein of Blood, Sweat & Tears (more Al Kooper then David Clay-Thomas or Jerry Fisher though) and touches on the schizophrenia of young love personified in it’s closing lines, “I don’t want nothing to do with you” (which ends with Tristan singing an incredible high note), then followed with the next line, “By the way, what you doing tomorrow night?”

Following up the relationship detailed in Your Love is a Drug, The End of an Era and Let it Go are reflections on it.

Youthful love may be crazy, intense, and full of ups and downs, but growing up brings change, and that change, as told in End of an Era, can only occur with self discovery - which Tristan beautifully puts in the line, “It’s time to introduce yourself to you”. To make the song even stronger, the underlying music is angelic and soulful, delivered with an acoustic guitar, a string section, and even bells. It especially reminds me of Led Zeppelin’s Going Back to California, which has the same airy, angelic feel but also maintains that pessimistic and questioning vocal tone.

Musically, Let it Go is almost the exact opposite. The song starts off with an incredible guitar solo, then rams into one hell of a riff with the solo continuing over it. If there is any point in the EP when Tristan sounds especially like Anthony Kiedis of RHCP it’s this song, he even falls into a sing-rap during the second verse.

But even better is the chorus, which completely falls off from the faster paced verses with a 9-part vocal harmony, like a Greek chorus reflecting a person’s conscience, singing to “Let it Go”.

Listen to Tristan Clopet’s Let it Go

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After those two, Tristan lays down Flowers in Bloom, a heartfelt anti-war song that musically reminds a lot of RHCP’s Tearjerker from One Hot Minute.

Following Flowers in Bloom is Concrete Dreams, which I’d say musically is their strongest song. Concrete Dreams paints the picture of a man who lost his whole life to drug use. But Concrete Dreams’ strength is that it typifies that simple rocking feel that made the EP so strong. A very, very standard rock song. It’s actually incredibly easy to envision a video for the song. It’s one of those.

And last is Oceans, another airy song about the abstract concept of the ocean as a tool of fate. Oceans is actually my one negative against the EP. It’s a slow paced song and is a weak way to close out an EP. It would have been better to end the album on a powerful song like Concrete Dreams.

I also sent five questions to Tristan about the album. I want to thank him for his openness, plus his patience that I took forever to finally write the EP review.

You just released your first E.P., Duende. The sound quality of the recording is fantastic! Where did you record and with who? What was the process like?

Thank you. My process is an interesting one because I write all the parts. It involves me recording one thing at a time and building the song much like a house. It might start with a programmed drum part and dub over that with a bass line and go from there. The spontaneity can be exciting but at the same time, if you don’t have a general idea of where the song is going to go, you can get lost very quickly.

For Duende, I recorded half the album at my home studio and asked “The Juice” to accompany me live for the other three songs at Velvet Basement Studios where Robert Dante also did a great job mixing the album.

The second song on Duende, The End of an Era, is written like a self-help declaration of change and self betterment. What was the inspiration behind that song?

You know, a lot of people have told me that they find that as a common underlying theme of the entire album. The End of an Era is easily the most personal song of mine and I’m still pretty young and at a stage where I’m actually monitoring my own personal growth. Being presented with typical issues and seeing myself learn how to deal with them. I know that sounds like some out of body stuff but you know, everybody goes through it and I just happened to be completely conscious of it and put it in a song.

You’re a New York transplant, right? How do you like playing in Miami? What are your thoughts on the Miami music scene?

I didn’t grow up in New York but I definitely “grew up” in New York. I’d visit my dad about twice a month since I was four years old, spent a lot of summers with him, etc. and I moved there permanently in 2004. But I moved to Miami in 2006 for school and I had the full intention of earning a degree (just to get it out of the way) and then move back to the city and start my music career. But I started a band down here while in school, realized that anything that I was putting energy into unrelated to music was me lying to myself (there we go with that self-separation stuff again) and I decided that life was too short to not live your passion. I’m extremely excited about this scene. I think that there are a ton of good artists down here just waiting to explode.

Who are some of your favorite bands and influences?

Well the most transparent influence of mine is the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I stole my sister’s copy of Blood Sugar Sex Magik when I was seven and used to jump around the living room singing Sir Psycho Sexy. And then my parents heard the lyrics and I didn’t get the tape back until I was like, thirteen. I adore them though. I love Radiohead because they are modern day Mozarts. I love the Smashing Pumpkins because of Billy Corgan’s soundscapes and versatility. I love Outkast because Andre 3000 gives me the strength to do my own thing. I love Annuals because they’re the best live band I’ve ever seen and because they’re great people. And I love Jeff Buckley because he was an epiphany.

What are you looking forward to? Do you have any things on the horizon?

The future is very exciting for my band and I but you know what they say, the trouble with the future is that it comes one day at a time.

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Duende is an incredibly solid, well produced first EP. Also, Tristan has one of the best mindsets of anyone I’ve met in the scene. He is a professional, but also is incredibly easy to talk to and has very little ego when it comes to his band.

Considering that they’ve just recently appeared on the local scene, Tristan has already played a bunch of big shows. They made it to the finals of the New Times Battle of the Bands, and will be playing Hard Rock’s Ambassadors of Rock, Battle of the Bands tomorrow, April 23. I have a lot of confidence in him and his music. I hope to see him in London soon.

To visit the page, click here:

 http://www.revmiami.com/2009/04/album-review-tristan-clopets-duende-ep/