Sex Clark Five: The greatest Alabama band you've never heard
Published: Mar. 26, 2014, 11:00 a.m.
Matt Wake | mwake@al.com
Roughly 18 years ago, Kip Jackson was living in Montreal when he found a used copy of Sex Clark Five's 1987 debut album "Strum and Drum!" on vinyl at a local record store. His roommate at the time was already into the Huntsville, Alabama-based band. Jackson purchased the LP and soon became a Sex Clark Five fan, entranced by the group's acoustic-and-electric guitar tangle, falsetto harmonies, sense of humor, interesting time changes and fondness for dropping geographical references into lyrics.
As years go by, a sense of mystery has pulled Jackson, whose other favorite artists included Velvet Underground, in further.
"Looking Sex Clark Five up on the internet for maybe the past 10 years or so, not only is there limited information, there's extremely limited footage," Jackson, now 42, says. A librarian by trade, he lives in Sackville, New Brunswick, about 150 miles west of Halifax, Nova Scotia. "They've continued to put out music, albeit sporadically, but they don't seem to tour to promote the material.
"It seems like they're in hiding. For me, that makes the music a little more significant because I ask myself, 'How can music this good not get the exposure that other music of a similar caliber gets?'"
Such is the jarring dichotomy of the Sex Clark Five. As of the publishing of this story, the band's Facebook page boasts only 127 "likes" – you can find house pets with more of a social media presence. The band does not currently maintain a website. However, Sex Clark Five gets mad respect from musicians, such as indie band New Pornographers citing them as unsung heroes in GQ Magazine, and music industry taste-makers, including the esteemed English deejay John Peel, who until his 2004 death featured Sex Clark Five several times on his BBC Radio 1 "Peel sessions," which, in addition to countless obscure acts, have also spotlit the likes of David Bowie, Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Daft Punk, Neko Case, White Stripes and perhaps most famously Led Zeppelin.
For a band whose songs rarely extend beyond two minutes in duration with very little pause before the next track begins, in recent decades Sex Clark Five has taken forever to issue new albums. In 2013, the group released its first LP in 13 years, "RembrandtX." Normally, when groups reunite for a new project after that kind of stretch, you can still detect some of what originally made them compelling in the new material but in a much diluted form. Yet, "RembrandtX" is surprisingly vibrant from opening strum to the final tambourine rattle. Highlights from the whopping 30 tracks – yes, 30 – include: "California," which echoes early Kinks; "Darkness," a glimpse into purple psychedelia; "Chancellor," a bit of glam-folk ; and "When John Lennon Died," which tells The Beatles story in 142 seconds of ascendant harmonies.
Pseu Braun has been a deejay at New Jersey, N. J. free-form, listener supported radio station WFMU for 21 years. She'd played Sex Clark Five tunes as far back as her days at Rutgers University's WRSU, so when the band reached out via email last year to see if she'd be interested in receiving a copy of "RembrandtX" she was surprised, not because of the overture, which is commonplace, but that Sex Clark Five "were still together." The group's last album had been 2000's "Crimson Panzer," which arrived seven years after the "Antedieum" LP, which was four years following 1989's sophomore effort "Battle of Sex Clark Five."
"I was slightly skeptical," Braun says. "What is this going to sound like? I couldn't have imagined it being as good or better than things they've done before. People get along in age. But they sent it to me and I was really pleasantly surprised. They kept that enigmatic pop essence that I always felt from them. It was just really delightful to hear them back. It almost made the mystery deepen even more. Who are they? What are they like to hang out with?"
Sex Clark Five: The greatest Alabama band you've never heard, Part 2 - Bolan, Beatles and basements
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Sex Clark Five: The greatest Alabama band you've never heard, Part 4 – The reissue issue
Sex Clark Five: The greatest Alabama band you've never heard, Part 5 – 'We didn't know who The Pixies were'