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Clinic came out of England in the wake of Radiohead
and Stereolab
with the singles The Voot (Aladdins' Cave of Golf, 1997),
Monkey On Your Back and Cement Mixer, later compiled on
Three Piece (Domino, 2001), and a sound that bridged the late,
post-psychedelic 1990s with the new wave of the late 1970s.
Ade Blackburn was an acrobatic singer and an inventive arranger (guitarist and
keyboardist). Unlike their more famous contemporaries,
Clinic were not all about form.
Each song wavered and trebled with an overload of emotions, that found
the perfect vehicle in Blackburn's voice,
a haunting, menacing, ghostly tone somewhere between
Velvet Underground's Lou Reed and
Suicide's Alan Vega.
Internal Wrangler (Domino, 2000), the proper debut album (a short one
at 31 minutes), grafts disturbing sonic poetry onto the standard rock
vocabulary.
After the surreal instrumental Voodoo Wop,
the pounding jumping blues of Return of Evil Bill
(a cross between Rip Rig & Panic and
Fleshtones),
the tribal-surf dance of Internal Wrangler (with bubbling electronica
and harshly droning organ),
the bouncy garage-rock of Second Foot Stomp (another distorted
organ a` la Suicide coupled with
a refrain a` la T.Rex and a synthesizer riff
a` la Beach Boys's Good Vibration)
and the pulsing neurosis of 2/4 (whose colossal organ riff blends
Suicide and
Doors into a breathless pow-wow dance)
set a high standard for arrangements that mix driving rhythms and
primal melodies. Instead of the lush arrangements of contemporary Brit-pop,
Clinic opted for a humbler strategy.
Every song has at least one instrument or sound effect that stands out
for the eccentric way in which it is employed, whether a harmonica or the
sound of ocean waves.
Contrasting the romantic serenade of Distortions and
the disco-soul a` la Soft Cell of The Second Line
with the visceral rave-ups of Hippy Death Suite
Clinic found
the middle ground between two entirely different histories of rock music.
Tribal drumming, cheesy synthesizers, sexy melodica continuously challenge
the vocals and the melodies.
Much of the energy of the debut album is absent from the sleekly produced
Walking With Thee (Domino, 2002), but most of the magic is still
there. In general the new songs
adapt their trademark sounds to more conventional stereotypies.
To start with, Harmony pushes the sensual whisper on a fluid carpet
of metronomic beats, staccato keyboards and western-movie harmonicas.
The effect is an odd hybrid of Inxs and
Chris Isaak.
There is little else than collective pounding to the arrangement of
The Equalizer, a fact that bestows a demonic quality on it.
The elastic blues-rock Welcome completes the killer opening triad
of the album. Alas, the rest of the album is vastly inferior, with the
exception perhaps of the
T.Rex-esque boogie of Sunlight Bathes Our Home.
While the best songs further refine their take on the subconscious,
too many of them merely sound like variations on the first album's songs
(the distorted organ of Walking with Thee, the feverish rave-up of
Pet Eunuch, the pseudo-surf dance of The Bridge).
A couple of moody ballad hardly reassure the
Confirming the concerns generated by the weaker material on
Walking With Thee,
Clinic even paid tribute to English pagan folk on
Winchester Cathedral (2004), containing the single
The Magician.
The songwriting improved a bit on Visitations (2007),
running the gamut from psychedelic bubblegum (Harvest) to
thrash'n'roll (Tusk) to garage-rock (If You Could Read Your Mind),
but none of the songs come close to matching the verve and the charm of
their debut singles.
A wealth of old-fashioned instruments helps make the songs interesting
even when the songwriting and the melodies are substandard.
Funf (2007) collects rarities.
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(Translation by/ Tradotto da Luca Battistini)
I Clinic sbucarono dall'Inghilterra sulla scia di Radiohead
e Stereolab
con i singoli The Voot (Aladdins' Cave of Golf, 1997),
Monkey On Your Back e Cement Mixer, raccolti
successivamente su
Three Piece (Domino, 2001), e un sound che univa i tardi,
post-psichedelici anni 90 con la new wave dei tardi anni 70.
Ade Blackburn e' un cantante acrobatico e un arrangiatore inventivo
(chitarrista e tastierista). A differenza dei loro maestri, i
Radiohead, i Clinic non sono tutti dediti all'aspetto formale.
Ogni canzone oscilla e si triplica in un sovraccarico di emozioni che
trovano il loro perfetto veicolo nella voce di Blackburn
(un tono insistente, minaccioso, spettrale, tra Lou Reed dei
Velvet Underground e Alan Vega dei
Suicide).
Internal Wrangler (Domino, 2000), il vero e proprio debut
album (della breve durata di 31 minuti), innesta una disturbante
poesia sonica sul classico vocabolario rock.
Contrapponendo il bubblegum di The Second Line e
Distortions
ai deliri viscerali di C.Q. e Hippy Death Suite,
i Clinic mostrano un impressionante raggio stilistico, e Return of
Evil Bill
riesce a trovare la terra di mezzo tra due storie della musica rock
completamente differenti.
In Hippy Death Suite e Earth Angel
il drumming tribale, i sintetizzatori, la melodica sexy mettono di
continuo alla prova
le parti vocali e le melodie.
Molta dell'energia dell'esordio e' assente da
Walking With Thee (Domino, 2002). Parecchie canzoni
(in particolar modo Come Into Our Room, For The Wars,
Walking with Thee, Harmony) introducono nuovi elementi
che affinano la loro presa sul subconscio,
ma troppe tracce sono semplicemente variazioni sulle canzoni del
primo album
(Welcome, Sunlight Bathes Our Home, etc).
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