Have you tried luminus[0]?
I found it to be quite straightforward to get started. What I didn't like about clojure is that it smells like java a tiny bit too much and there's too much to choose from be it language abstractions or libraries I guess that's what you refer to as "pulling teeth".
I'm gonna try Phoenix for my next project, even though I really like Django and I have never been too much into rails or ruby. My other option would be Django + socket.io, and I think that would be the more mature stack, but as much as I like javascript and python I think that would lead to more complexity and thus make the project harder to maintain. I may be stabbing myself in the foot, but let's hope not :D