Clinic
“Visitations”
DOMINO RECORDS
Whether it would be better set to a warped neo-noir chase scene
or looming through the blue mist of a Tennessee Williams playhouse,
Clinic’s music is defined by the uncharacteristic use of its
components: irreverent, clanging rhythms and amplified melodic
effects lend an air that is nothing short of widescreen.
Such has also been the band’s ability to befuddle rock
critics’ attempts to characterize them (Velvet Underground,
Suicide and Can are popular references). From 2000’s rumbling
“Internal Wrangler” to the two subsequent, more
polished releases “Walking With Thee” and
“Winchester Cathedral,” comparisons have fallen short
to components barely discernible in the haunted maze serving as
Clinic’s musical palette.
“Visitations,” the fourth release from the Liverpool
art-rock foursome, doesn’t make it any easier on anybody
““ that is, anybody unwilling to fall prey to its hypnosis.
The album summons the primitive conventions of “Internal
Wrangler,” a return to form which also gives way to an
interesting parallel: This album is about the primitiveness of
human behavior and its struggle with a selfish and animal nature,
according to singer Ade Blackburn.
Blackburn’s nasal, clenched-teeth vocals, having assumed a
pivotal position to offset the album’s insistence on rhythm,
continue to offer only a sliver of audible lyrics per song. But it
is the rhythm that penetrates, speaking for itself. The tribal beat
and bouncing bass of the album’s single, “Harvest
(Within You),” perpetuates the thematic vein of the pulsating
inner struggle that is fighting on both sides to be
illuminated.
“Visitations” loses momentum after
“Tusk,” a gratuitous thrashy punk track and the
leisurely “Paradise.” It is followed by two strong yet
nearly identical numbers, “Children of Kellog” and
“If You Could Read Your Mind” which get the job done by
getting you to your feet. The percussive arrangement on the album
is true to the “party effect” the band had in mind
““ Clinic has gotten its proverbial groove back.
Perhaps the heavy theme of the album is an attempt to transcend
the foursome’s detached image as they are clad in surgical
masks during live performances. Or maybe it exists to imbue the
return to form with more creative authority than its predecessor.
That seems to be the only glaring flaw of
“Visitations,” a raw, self-recorded beast of an album
trying to eat through itself, working through its past to reach
something beyond. It falters along the way, but anything that is
insistent on battling with itself to transcend just may be worth
the flaws.
E-mail Kalenderian at tkalendarian@media.ucla.edu.