- The Liverpudlian art psych outfit Clinic were a sure-bet in the 2000s in terms of output, putting a new studio album out every two years like clockwork. For each release, their small but passionate audience was often rabidly enthusiastic about the mysterious music produced by these strange men, most noted for wearing surgical masks on stage. Then following their 2012 record Free Reign, came seven years of unexplained silence, finally broken by their new album Wheeltappers And Shunters.
Those elements which have always made Clinic so distinctive are still there in spades, from frontman Ade Blackburn’s queasy vocals to the music’s exotic blend of psychedelia, experimentalism and garage rock. Perhaps influenced by past collaborator Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never), the album also revisits the more electronica-based sounds created on the aforementioned Free Reign and its remix companion album Free Reign II. This is largely evident in the sequenced beat patterns that chug through the likes of Complex, an eerie surf crawler with a melody that resembles the verses from Abba’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).
In another grainy snapshot from the past, there’s a smoky sax in Ferryboat of the Mind that plays a simple melody reminiscent of The Shadows’ Apache, while Lynchian guitar and gurgling Moogs add to the tune’s cinematic menace. Perhaps the biggest throwback to the band’s psych rock roots is the single Laughing Cavalier, stomping along like Barrett-era Pink Floyd and Blackburn singing about being “fancy free” like a man who sounds anything but.
The album’s title is a reference to an obscure ‘70s British variety TV show, set in a fictional working men’s club. As with most of their back catalogue, the record takes in lashings of vintage keyboards and a haunting atmosphere that evokes the fuzzy memories of a past Britain that may have never actually existed. This in turn makes a lot of their music relevant to the present, perhaps commenting on the nostalgia for old British culture which was doubtless forefront in the mind of many who voted in favour of Brexit. So once again, Clinic’s dusty nightmarish rock provides a spooky soundtrack to our times.
-Matt Thrower.