Clinic November 19, 2010

Clinic’s music is a sulphate groove once the sulphate has started to wear off. Over four albums they have refined and re-melded their nervy kinesis around the yelps and howls of Ade Blackburn who often sounds like someone coming up with a strategy for leaving their own body. This quartet from Liverpool exploded into life about nine years ago, making an instant impact with a homemade single “IPC Sub Editors Dictate Our Youth” and a clutch of EPs. Signing to Domino, they released their brilliant debut long player, Internal Wrangler in 2000, toured with Radiohead and appeared at Scott Walker’s Meltdown. In 2002, second album, Walking With Thee earned them lavish praise in the US, where they appeared often, before recording the dense and spooky Winchester Cathedral, released in 2004.

Clinic’s magisterial fifth album Do It! opens with what sounds like the melodious chimes of a harpsichord before all hell breaks loose. Asking you if you want the good or the bad news, the song lurches between Ade Blackburn’s bittersweet vocal line concerning memory and the band tearing itself inside out. Do It! is a record dripping in a delicious and seductive tension. Clinic have never sounded so relaxed and so uptight.

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