"I hadn’t had a band for yonks," Jay Clarkson says on the phone from that other rock and roll capital, Waikouaiti. Home these days. "And I really wondered if I was going to have another band."
In the event, she does and that band, Jay Clarkson and the Containers, turns out to be something of a southern indie supergroup, featuring, among its roster, players from The Enemy and Toy Love, The Chills and Snapper.
Drummer Mike Dooley is the Enemy/Toy Love connection — and another resident of the East Otago hamlet. He’d beaten Clarkson out to its microclimate by a year or so.
"Funny. Funny the surprises life brings upon us," she says.
Clarkson is clearly counting her blessings. She’s usually worked with very capable players, she says, but also musicians equipped with a sensitivity.
"Because you don’t just want a clever dick, you know. You want someone who’s sensitive and has empathy for what you’re doing."
The band, drawn as it is from a familiar community of musicians, shared a common language that provided ready-made simpatico, she says.
And then, you imagine Clarkson didn’t have to twist anyone’s arm too hard, such is her celebrated back catalogue, including ’80s bands They Were Expendable and The Expendables, the strength of her song writing over many years and that voice — as distinctive as a Chrissie Hynde, a Marianne Faithful or a PJ Harvey.
Now, there’s an album, Falling Through — featuring Alan Haig on keyboards and Tenzin Mullin on bass — to be released in the coming week and played in full at Pearl Diver, in Dunedin, on Friday. The album is her second on the Vienna-based Zelle Records label, following 2015 solo effort, Spur.
It’s classic Clarkson, folk-inflected garage stylings, with a sharp edge, sparely populated with metaphor.
Indeed, there’s a space and grace to the songs, that unfurl unhurried, in their own time. Pop songs that are welcome to stay a little longer, and wander out to five minutes.
The album has been a while in the making, another of the art world’s projects elongated by the pandemic.
"It sure has, because we started around just before Covid, recording, getting all the songs together," Clarkson says.
The process had been quite organic — initiated when a friend of a friend laid down a wero, to write a song.
"Yeah, well, what tends to happen with me," she says of the less than planned nature of it all. "A new line-up, you know, and we immediately started practising weekly. Well, not practising, playing together weekly. And that one song very quickly led to two, three, four, five, six, because when you’re practising every week or playing together every week, for me anyway, it gets the creative juices going and you instinctively write for the people you’re playing with."
Among the places those creative juices visited was the world of politics, perhaps infected by the world’s fevered discourse.
But it’s not all grim 21st century reportage.
"Other songs reflect the beauty of our world," she says.
Clarkson says the lyrics to her songs usually come quickly, and are then pared back to the essential.
"It kind of just ‘is what it is’ at the time. But, I mean, I can on reflection see that this album is more political than usual, in a poetical way."
It’s more global, she adds, less a commentary on relationships than past outings. And cosmic.
The title track falls squarely into the political category, grieving for "the luxury of just the facts", and incorporating a bridge that evokes alarm bells.
"Yeah, absolutely," she says. "You know, children in a tub pout their lips and count the dollars. Yeah, I wonder who pouts his lips a lot."
But Clarkson’s not going to be restricted by that "falling through" metaphor, even if the song talks about "too many players on the ice".
"Well, the term falling through, I use it and it fluctuates how I use that term. ... I mean, the thing with poetry is that, to pin it down really tightly ruins it. But we’re kind of falling through the cracks at the moment or something. But at the same time, at the end, I use the term falling through as falling through rules and regulations through to a more beautiful thing. That’s where it gets cosmic."
On the other side of the ledger there’s 1000 Hours, a love letter to possibility that wanders off on a cloud of pedal-powered guitar, a reminder of the beauty in front of our eyes and a prompt to recognise it.
A good measure of the beauty that resides in Falling Through comes courtesy of Clarkson’s singular vocal. But she demurs when asked about it, joking that, no, she didn’t check back in with a singing coach before this latest enterprise.
"I don’t know. I’ve got a deeper voice. I do have a slightly jazzy ... I mean, my mum loved singers like Peggy Lee and Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald, so that would be blasting away in the house. It’s just not something I think about."
The band line-up is slightly changed for Friday’s gig, Dooley has stepped back, but Clarkson is very much looking forward to reuniting with her remaining collaborators.
"We’re really, really looking forward to the gigs. We love playing our music together. We really love it," she says.
"You know, when you’re playing music, you go somewhere you can’t go otherwise. Well, I suppose with anything you love, it’s kind of meditative."
