This probably doesn't really help you, but for "Web application and routing layer. Ring/compojure don’t do it for me.", I really love bidi and yada (both by juxt) as a very pleasant routing/web app layer. I also really love the re-frame app architecture, but its for clojurescript frontend only. So far, my backend needs have been very simple, but I would love for a re-frame-like system for backend too, that would be pretty nice IMHO.