Clementine Was Right

What are you supposed to miss? What do you really miss? Burnt down olive orchards, mysterious friendships, mothers washing their boots in the sea, attics full of Barbie limousines.

Clementine Was Right is the songwriting project of poets Mike Young and Gion Davis. Chronicling years of uprooting—from Northern California to New England, Alaska to New Mexico—the music gallops and sways through hook-smeared bootgaze and western emo, queering the lineage of "country music" with yokel fuzz.

In 2024, they released their most ambitious ambitious album yet: Tell Yourself You&#39;re Going Home. Recorded over two years in Memphis, Denver, New Mexico, and beyond, these 9 songs (and 1 poem) feature 30 different collaborators. They sound like <a href="spotify:artist:2QoU3awHVdcHS8LrZEKvSM" data-name="Wilco">Wilco</a> asking <a href="spotify:artist:2k07pWgpJiFIbb9q1yJ36B" data-name="Magnolia Electric Co.">Magnolia Electric Co.</a> to help them find <a href="spotify:artist:0JDkhL4rjiPNEp92jAgJnS" data-name="Roy Orbison">Roy Orbison</a>&#39;s lost cabin on the Pacific coast. Paste Magazine called it a Top 40 Rock Record of 2024.

The band is based in Denver and features an orchard of collaborators from the Sierra Nevadas to the Ozarks. Thanks to national DIY touring and a collaborative online presence, Clementine Was Right is building a quilt of listeners all over the country, singing along under their breath, driving a Volvo to the doughnut store, packing the rain in the smell of your coat, taking on the distances you never learn to trust.

(illustrations by Lynds Lesh, photos by 1: Delaney Taylor, 2: Jordan Altergott, 3 and 5: Tessa Brancato 4: Christian Lindsey, 6 and 7: Gion Davis)