Clementine Was Right – Tell Yourself You’re Going Home | Album Review
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The Blue Turn
On Tell Yourself You’re Going Home, the third LP by Denver’s Clementine Was Right, songwriters Mike Young and Gion Davis give us a joyous road trip album–a rock and roll Paris, Texas for nomads weaving their way through state lines across every corner of the United States. Rowdy country-rock anthems, paint-huffed hellions, wood-chipped workers, cowboy chord croonings, and “boys, boys, boys” sleeping in the river: Tell Yourself You’re Going Home is one hell of a party. For Young and Davis, the party is bigger than ever with over 30 friends contributing to Clementine’s lineup.
Clementine Was Right continue their signature blend of barroom rock and country campfire ballads heard on 2020’s Lightning and Regret and 2022’s Can’t Get Right With the Darkness. This time, the production is a little more polished and calculated. Whether it’s a perfectly placed backing vocal harmony singing “It’s ketchup, we’re fuckups” or guitar licks that flicker like flames in stereo, there are little flourishes here and there that bring the recording side of CWR to the next level. The production choices and sequencing of tracks make the album feel like a house party hosted by the band themselves. Throughout the album, you’ll find Young and Company holding your hand, dragging you through a crowded living room, leading you to the bathroom to get high, and meeting you out back for a smoke.
Tell Yourself You’re Going Home is largely carried by Young’s brilliant Springsteen-esque songwriting. Young, who consistently bills himself as a poet, happens to be quite the storyteller, and each song on Tell Yourself is a chapter or short story into a slice of American life. With drug-addled characters slipping in and out of excitement and despair, “Attic Full of Barbie Limousines” feels like it could fit somewhere in the pages of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. Elsewhere, cuts like “Coca Cola Vigil” and “River Boys” tell tales of working-class grief with such specifics you’d think Young is letting us in on a secret.
Tell Yourself You’re Going Home isn’t a downer, though. The darkness found on these ballads is often balanced with Young’s constant reminiscing on the many friendships he’s made across life and state lines. As previously mentioned, Clementine Was Right created this album with the help of upwards of 30 friends. The narrative of the album complements the band lore quite well. These 30 creatives live all over the place, and as the songs take us from California and Colorado to Mississippi and Tennessee, you get the feeling Young and Davis are meeting up to record with the very same characters depicted in the songs.
On an album so thematically heavy about friendships, it’s no surprise that two of the highlights are when Young lets a bandmate take the lead vocal role. “Attic Full of Barbie Limousines” is possibly Clementine’s best song–it’s certainly a contender for my favorite (though “Nazarene Sheen” from the band’s debut is hard to beat). Young, perhaps graciously or with full artistic genius, lets drummer Dick Darden hop in the vocal booth for a song Young wrote. Darden’s suave rasp couldn’t be more perfect for the bouncy, somber-disguised-as-happy country tune.
Then there’s “Goddamn Universe,” the penultimate track written and spoken by Gion Davis. On this track, Clementine Was Right drop the country-rock act and put on their post-rock boots. Davis recites his poetry over ambient guitar squeals and soft percussion, and the result is the most unique song in CWR’s catalog. Though the sonic qualities cause the song to stand out, it’s Davis’ lyrics that truly bring the track to another level. Rich with cross-country imagery like “Tennessee is a hallway stretching between the lottery numbers in a gas station and sprays of redbud trees in some unmarked canyon” and “I have measured out my life in Cook Out trays,” Davis puts me in every corner of America I’ve ever been. His lyrics sit perfectly between “I have no idea what this means” and “I know exactly what he’s talking about.” Davis is a powerhouse of lyricism, and “Goddamn Universe” is, frankly, a very beautiful song.
There are so many themes and ideas woven through the songwriting of Tell Yourself You’re Going Home it would be impossible to dissect them all in one simple album review. The album isn’t just about road-tripping and partying–it’s equally about returning home from your travels and realizing what has changed while you were gone. Whether it is returning to your birthplace, returning to a city you lived in briefly, or returning to the ones you love, there is this sense that you should “tell yourself you’re going home” no matter where you’re headed. It’s this constant homeward-bound sentiment trickling through the tracks that make Tell Yourself You’re Going Home Clementine Was Right’s strongest album yet.
Russ Finn is a writer and musician who leads the band Dialup Ghost in Nashville, TN.
