Ask the average reasonably-informed music fan who Clover were, and you’re likely to get one of three responses: they were the much-fancied early 70s countryrock outfit who weren’t The Eagles or Poco; the band with whom Huey Lewis paid his dues; the intuitive musos who made Elvis Costello’s My Aim Is True debut the work of art it is.
All three are correct. Clover dabbled and dared decades before anyone had come up with a phrase like “alt.country”, investigating musical hybrids with even less success than The Flying Burrito Brothers. This collection of previously unheard demos draws inevitable comparisons with Gram Parsons’ posse, not least the attempts at soldering sepia-toned rural country to urban soul (their cover of Sam Cooke’s Chain Gang) or the southern R&B strut of If You Only.
With the benefit of hindsight (which is, realistically, all we have to play with in 2009), the hook-up with Costello made perfect sense. A lean and hungry powerhouse like the young Declan MacManus needed wise heads and weather-worn journeymen to help realise his potential, and on this evidence, borrowing from a hit TV show of the time, Clover were the perfect Masters to his Grasshopper.
