With frontman Alasdair MacLean’s hinting in the press recently of a possible retirement of the Clientele, the occasion felt something like a “This Might Be It Tour.” On the second of a two-night stand at Spaceland, the band gave fans a well-picked but fleeting review of its melancholy catalogue. MacLean’s guitar work is nearly as fascinating to watch as it is to hear: one set of fingers flailing fast to pluck the strings, the other stretching into complex chords most of us have probably never heard of, all while he shakes the entire instrument about. It looks haphazard, but the result is a precise, shimmering array of arpeggios. His playing is the centerpiece of the band’s sound, but it stood out a tad too much toward the beginning of the set. After a pair of up-tempo numbers, “I Wonder Who We Are” and “Bookshop Casanova,” some half-baked heckler shouted, “Even your disco songs are ethereal!”  Rude, yes, but he had a point—the bass and drums were buried in the mix, a problem that was soon corrected. MacLean added a good dose of humor between songs. After explaining that they’d be playing a selection of “hits” from throughout their years, he joked that their next number would be Madonna’s “Ray of Light.” The highlight of the set, for this reviewer, was an unexpected choice from their early collection, Suburban Light, that MacLean said they never used to play live due to its difficulty. Besides being one of their most achingly beautiful tunes, “Rain” was an appropriate choice given the winter showers that graced the city that evening, and the band pulled it off swimmingly. “Rain, soft in the dark, we take a left through the deepening park,” MacLean sang, whispery yet slightly sinister. Good news came toward the end of the night, when MacLean revealed that they’ll be releasing a mini-album later this year and will most likely tour in support of it. Here’s hoping it won’t be their last.

—Thomas McMahon