The Clause – Victim Of A Casual Thing: Album Review

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The Clause’s debut album is a sharp snapshot of a band figuring out who they are.

The Clause have come a long way from their early days putting on DIY gigs in Digbeth, Birmingham.

What began as a group of college friends playing for their mates has evolved into a confident debut album that captures both their ambition and their limits.

Victim Of A Casual Thing is a collection of polished, guitar-led anthems that nod to mid-2000’s indie rock while occasionally revealing flashes of something more introspective beneath the surface.

The album opens with Prologue, a short cinematic scene that fades seemingly from last orders in a pub into a swirl of synths.

It segues into Nothing’s As It Seems, a swaggering introduction built on power-pop melody and a chorus unashamedly built for festival fields.

‘You’re hanging on to faded hopes and dreams, sing myself to sleep because nothing’s really ever as it seems’, frontman Pearce Macca sings, weary in content but confident in delivery.

It’s a marker for the rest of Victim Of A Casual Thing: undeniably ambitious, slightly overblown, but catchy.

Tell Me What You Want is funkier, aping Hard-Fi in their pomp before added licks and outro that recall Muse and Royal Blood.

Its disco-rock edge feels familiar but just about works thanks to The Clause’s obvious propensity for melody and momentum.

Older single In My Element still carries the energy that first put them on the map, with sharp riffs and quick-fire rhymes.

That sense of urgency is sustained on White Lifelines, which pairs Arctic Monkeys-style riffs with a boisterous chorus.

Indeed, the spirit of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not is alive and well, with several riffs drawing comparison to the seminal (and nearly two-decade old) album.

Not everything hits the mark; Elisha is a step down, weighed by laddish nostalgia and awkwardly specific lyrics (‘Kissed me round the back of the Wetherspoons in Leeds’). Less offensive than immature, it could have done with another polish.

Exception is better, leaning into widescreen ballad territory. There’s a clear debt to Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, but it’s executed with enough heart not to feel mawkish.

Weekend Millionaire and I Don’t Care pick the pace back up, revisiting Victim Of A Casual Thing’s overarching themes of youth, freedom and denial.

‘Never earned a penny that you haven’t spent,’ Macca sings on the latter with a weariness that suits him.

Fever Dream is one of the strongest offerings, combining more lyrical self-awareness with a melodic confidence.

Pink Moon softens things towards the end, a dreamy escape before Don’t Blink brings things to a close with a clean, anthemic finish.

Victim Of A Casual Thing isn’t revolutionary, but it doesn’t try to be. It’s a sharp snapshot of a band figuring out who they are, caught between the bravado of their influences and the insecurity of growing up.

Delivered with an undeniable gusto, it won’t change the world but it will likely resonate with and improve a young person’s life somewhere.

A promising first step.

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