Andrew Livingston – Clock Orchard

released on cassette and digital August 16th, 2024

Clock Orchard is the fifth solo album by multi-faceted musician Andrew Livingston. The album comes from a place of self-acceptance through formative experiences of the far and near past. Grist for the mill comes from Andrew’s religious upbringing, disability and chronic pain, and feelings of mortality in his late 40s. Without wanting to be defined by these narrative plots points of his life, Andrew decided to see what happens if he put them closer to the center of his writing process, and the results are deeply affecting.

Like Andrew’s past albums, Clock Orchard is made up of both songs and pieces. Some tracks have words, others don’t; some songs are in familiar forms, others are more expansive and formally inventive. Best known as a cellist from his work with Mike Doughty and in Ghost of Vroom, Andrew also features his instrumental prowess on bass, guitar, and keys on the album. He colors all these instruments with electronic modifications and doubling, creating novel and often uncanny effects. Andrew’s sui generis sound has been honed over 15+ years, and his normal mix of ambient, country, metal, classical, and psych rock has more heavy and loud flavors in the mix this time out.

The album opens with “Believer”, a doomy number that takes a few minutes to emerge from the fog before the vocals and the heavy licks enter. Always a Stravinsky lover (see the tattoo on his forearm), Andrew gets tricky with meter while lyrically tackling themes of resurrection. The title track runs a bath with pizzicato string pulses and then soaks arco cello lines in them. All these ticking strings set up a slow vocal on the subject of the transience of time, space, and perception. A number of the songs on the album are portraits of important people in Andrew’s life who are no longer living, and illustrating these people and themes in his life is part of his process of emotional digestion.

Like salted caramel, Andrew’s music is always and deliciously two things at once. It’s art music and pop music, it’s hilarious and it’s weepy, it’s electronic and also acoustic, it’s very smart and very dumb. Clock Orchard is the deepest expression yet from the heavy mind of Andrew Livingston.