Album Review: Street of the Love of Days by Amor de Días

Amor de Dias' Street of the Love of Days is the result of a collaboration between Alasdair MacLean of the Clientele and Lupe Núñez-Fernández of Pipas. Unlike a lot of side projects where the artists involved want to branch out and explore new musical vistas, Amor de Dias represents a perfect blend of the Clientele's quietly autumnal, richly arranged sound and Pipas' fragile and intimate approach to indie pop. Built around the duo’s gently plucked and strummed Spanish acoustic guitars, the record is a lush and refined treat that sounds the way burning leaves smells, lulling you with tender lullabies and surprising you like a glimpse of a fox scampering through shrubbery.

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Amor de Dias is a group formed by Alasdair MacLean of The Clientele and Lupe Núñez-Fernández of indie duo Pipas. Street of The Love of Days, their first release, was recorded in Spain and the UK. It is not, however, a vain exercise in musical tourism. Instead, there is a fine tuning of musical frequencies that makes this side project a delight.

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The opening notes of Street of the Love of Days should tell you quite a bit about the album. That quiet Spanish guitar, those haunting piano notes, the hollow sound of bouzouki -- it's all familiar and alien, laid-back yet haunting. For an album and band (Amor de Dias translates as "Love of Days") who claim to appreciate daylight, these songs sound awfully noctural at times.

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It’s hard at times to figure exactly how to pin down Street of the Love of Days, an ineffectual whisper of an album ensconced in a haze of Spanish vocals and hushed melodies. A collaboration between Clientele frontman Alasdair MacLean and Lupe Núñez-Fernández of Pipas, the album functions as a low-key meeting point for two genteel personalities, whose voices gel nicely but also merge somewhat flatly. The songs are murmur lullabies, two-to-three-minute wisps that are strong on atmosphere but often feel lacking elsewhere.

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Talk about what a change of scenery can do: For Alasdair MacLean, a summery hiatus with an open-ended return ticket from his main gig in the Clientele has given him the opportunity to broaden his horizons with Amor de Días, his collaboration with Lupe Núñez-Hernández of twee-poppers Pipas. On the duo’s first album together, Street of the Love of Days, MacLean has shed his wintry cardigan-rock for something brighter and lighter, crafting jazz-inflected indie-pop that conjures up mental images of warmer vibes and tropical climes. So it’s not like anyone really needs to tell you that the record was written in Spain and England by the pair, since there’s a breezy Mediterranean flair that breathes some new life into what had become a reliably winning, but well-worn formula MacLean had been finetuning and futzing with in the Clientele for over a decade.

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Amor De Días is a collaboration between the Clientele's Alasdair MacLean and Lupe Núñez-Fernández, a Spanish vocalist who has spent the past decade performing as one half of indie pop duo Pipas. Street of the Love of Days is a full-length affair they've been sculpting together in London, "in secret," since 2008, bringing in other notable musicians to flesh out their pastoral, sometimes psychedelic chamber pop. Names include Damon and Naomi, Gary Olson of Ladybug Transistor, and Louis Philippe.

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Matraca Berg Despite all the country hits she has written — for Trisha Yearwood, Deana Carter and Reba McEntire among others — Matraca Berg has kept her distance from the upbeat complacency of the Nashville mainstream. A pensive streak runs through her songs, and she embraces and honors it on .

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