I love taking walks through the English countryside at dawn. I’m so enamored with the dreary paradise that I don’t even mind sipping on the misty rain as it dashes into my tea. Clouds blanket the sky and the only memory in my head is that of last night’s twilight. The sun's dull rays peek through the clouds as I slowly make my way back home to the outskirts of London. Welcome to Suburban Light by the Clientele.

The Clientele have been releasing well-received singles in Europe since 1998, and Suburban Light is a compilation of all these (other than a three-song EP released here last year on March Records). Though the disc draws together three years of work, The Clientele’s vision and sound are remarkably consistent throughout, making this the most successful singles compilation I’ve heard since The Minders' Cul de Sacs and Dead Ends. The band seems content with their minimal, three-piece structure, and it works completely in their favor. Simple Belle and Sebastian-esque drum beats and basslines scurry beneath Alasdair Maclean’s gorgeously picked, Nick Drake influenced electric guitar and permanently reverb-soaked vocals, his voice coarse and wise enough to warrant a casual early Bowie reference. Occasionally psychedelic backing vocals, short, smart guitar solos, organs and bells subtly flesh out the mix.

The occasional tape hiss and overall lo-fi haziness of the production never hinders the final product. Instead, the sound adds an inexplicable freshness and authenticity to the music, proving downright paralytic to certain listeners. At their best, as in "We Could Walk Together", "From a Window" or "Rain", The Clientele offers something urgent, yet delicate and comforting enough for you to cuddle up and sink into. This music finds its home in a place that is almost hidden from sight, like Syd Barrett wandering around inside Joseph Cornell’s landscapes. At worst, one might say Suburban Light is wistfully redundant, or that Alasdair’s surreal, trippy lyrics are a bit much. "What’s in a blink? What’s in a sigh? What’s in the blink of an eye?" For me, anyway, the Clientele are just so damn charming that it’s hard to find much fault in their sometimes flawed execution. You know, sometimes I prefer a rainy day.