From an outsider's perspective, the Clientele's most recent record, God Save the Clientele, seems like a major evolutionary step for the long-running English band. Sure, the group dusted its previous release, 2005's Strange Geometry, with elegant string arrangements, but its latest effort is its most fully realized to date, with richly layered songs such as "Here Comes the Phantom" and "Isn't Life Strange?" earning comparisons with the paisley-splashed chamber pop of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. With its keening pedal-steel guitar and whisper-soft brushed drums, "The Queen of Seville" sounds like a nod in the direction of equally retro-obsessed Cornwall folk-rockers Mojave 3, while "The Garden at Night" explodes with welcome bursts of superfuzz-bigmuff guitar.

If it seems like a great leap forward from the spare, reverb-drenched sound of earlier Clientele efforts, such as 2001's Suburban Light, Alasdair MacLean has a good explanation for that. "It had always been my idea to make big-sounding records," the singer-guitarist says, reached on the road in Austin, Texas. "The first Clientele record was just a collection of demos that we had recorded trying to get a record deal that would then enable [us] to go into a studio with a choir or a 36-piece orchestra or whatever, but we never got the record deal that would enable us to do that, so the demos got released. That very lo-fi, minimal sound–people really responded to that to begin with, but it all was just an accident of economics."

The addition of multi-instrumentalist Mel Draisey to the lineup has broadened the Clientele's palette (and the willowy blonde's presence also adds to the visual appeal of the formerly all-male group), and MacLean's abandonment of his early vocal trademark–singing through a guitar amplifier–has helped the band polish its sound.

"When we first rehearsed, we couldn't afford a PA," MacLean recalls. "We didn't have anything to sing through, and the guitars and drums were reasonably loud, so we would just get a spare guitar amp and put the microphones through that and turn the reverb up to 10, so you had a lovely, warm spring reverb on the voice, which is a very '60s and early '70s sound. But it just purely came out of poverty being the mother of invention."

Speaking of poverty, the Clientele's last Vancouver appearance was in the very heart of the Downtown Eastside, at Pat's Pub. Although the band's performance was a stunner, MacLean classifies the gig as "a complete fiasco", noting that the sound on-stage was appalling, and remembering having to sing from a kneeling position at several points, thanks to a wayward microphone stand.

"You have to have a sense of humour about that kind of thing," he insists. "As soon as we got there, this kind of drunken, falling-down guy came and introduced himself to us. We just kind of assumed that if a guy's coming and introducing himself to us as soon as we get out of the car, he's the promoter or the club owner. But he was just a random drunk guy on the street, who then kind of led us around, bought all our records off of us, and then tried to get us to come home with him. It was just all very, very weird. You know, I love Vancouver, and I'm friends with the guys from Destroyer and everything, but that was one experience that was quite unforgettable."

The Clientele plays the Commodore Ballroom on Friday (September 21).