Patience

Patience

Dizzy Spells

Winona Records

Patience began as bedroom synth project for songwriter Roxanne Clifford after the break up of her acclaimed indie pop band Veronica Falls. Born out of a desire to experiment with a new sound and analogue synthesizers, the project has since grown to become an all-encompassing persona and serves as the main vehicle for the full emotional spectrum always latent in Clifford’s songwriting. From her first long-sold-out 7-inch singles on Night School, her knack for melodic hooks and oblique emotional stances already contained a glistening sheen of promise. Dizzy Spells serves as an intimate portrait of Clifford’s creative adventure, almost diaristic, conceived and recorded in her home studio, as well as with collaborators Todd Edwards (Daft Punk / UK Garage fame), Lewis Cook (Free Love / Happy Meals) and engineer Misha Hering (Virginia Wing). Dizzy Spells delivers a debut album that twists Clifford’s songwriting into new shapes and ecstasies. The album dances around melancholy, thrown to the floor like a bad dream to be circled, emerging bright-eyed into the early morning full of hope.

Patience

White Of An Eye / Blue Sparks

Night School

Patience – aka songwriter Roxanne Clifford – may have begun as a solo refuge from the Manchester-born, LA-Resident’s band duties but White Of An Eye, her 3rd single, is a fully formed, dancing-with-a tear-in-your-eye, confident Pop Moment. The attempt at shedding memories to embrace the present, an ode to the moment. Like her previous two singles The Church and The Pressure, Lewis Cook of Happy Meals engineers Clifford’s vision to Jacno-esque synth pop perfection. Blooming with a tentative synth cadence and nonchalant spoken word introduction, White Of An Eye soon erupts into perfect disco melancholy, with Clifford’s imagery perfectly nailing that nagging regret that haunts every new adventure. With the first appearance of a guitar hook in a Patience song, it’s a classic pop moment enunciated perfectly by Clifford’s instantly recognizable vocal.  “Melted skies, horizon lines are floating overhead” Blue Sparks Is a nocturne peppered with impressionistic imagery, romantic and doomed. Minimalist and affecting, here Patience is simply two synth lines and Clifford’s vocal. It’s Patience’s version of a Berntholer-style sadness, even evoking a Yazoo ballad. Like a Johnny Jewel production injected with passion, Patience captures the spark between two human hearts, the elusive, indefinable chemistry of sleepless, endless nights.

Patience

The Pressure

Night School

With a bittersweet stream of melancholy trickling through the half speed drum machine, Patience – aka Roxanne Clifford’s - plaintive appraisal of life’s turmoil, a period spent changing, aches across the ages. With The Pressure, Clifford’s songwriting continues to soar into new territories and textures, here providing irresistible Italo-disco hooks with a classic cry/dance backbone. The Pressure takes Patience’s crystalline synth-pop further into the dry-iced corners of a club in 1983.. though here Clifford has managed to marry a cold production, aided as before by Happy Meals’ Lewis Cook’s engineering, with the inherent sweetness in her vocal. The Pressure never relents, with pulsating waves of harmony and crisp snare cracks building like the greatest early Mute Records 7” they never released, an ode to relationships and the craziness they inflict on us. On the flip, Wait For You is the make up after the pressure of the fall out. Following on from her sister-band Veronica Falls’ penchant for covering Roky Erickson, Patience’s quietly dramatic take on his sweet love song is enhanced by Clifford’s Mancunian lilt and the drone-pop synthesizers humming sweetly. Dressed in Clifford’s harmonies, the song’s sweetness brings a soothing counter-balance to the A-side. The Pressure / (Wait) For You follows Patience’s debut 7” The Church, released in June 2016.

Patience

The Church / My Own Invention

Night School

The patience of a tear reflecting the disco-ball, the pleasure/pain principle of losing someone close, the longing earned on a deserted pier. Patience is an alias of Roxanne Clifford, a songwriter of repute most recently fronting Veronica Falls. With Patience, Clifford has broken the band-shackles, jettisoned other voices and mainlines a sweetened melodic nous recognisable from her other work, though this time over an impeccable synth pop production. These recordings were waxed with the assistance of Lewis Cook of Glasgow band Happy Meals at Full Ashram Celestial Gardens, Glasgow and Sam Pillay of Virginia Wing at VW House. From the onset the listener is plunged into dry ice, a sweeping synth and drum opening beamed in from a club in mid-80s Italy. Clifford's voice cuts straight to the heart, a tale of late nights, the dance of guilt and ecstasy. Lyrically, we're rooted at the spot where the church once stood but the Patient heart waits elsewhere, in the dry mists of dreams. B-side My Own Invention is nominally a ballad, a minimal composition that with the sampled vocal harmonies references Laurie Anderson but with a heart-warming melodic line. It's a simple, nursery-rhyme mini-drama that is effortlessly breezy and a wonderfully sweet partner to dancing with tears in your eyes A-side. Wait for Patience, there will be more.