Clinic wants to transform The Troubadour into a dance garage.
The dirty reverb and heavy drone of the British band’s latest release, “Visitations,” may find the venue’s dusty wood interior a perfect home, but front man Ade Blackburn only hopes he’ll also find a dancing crowd at Friday night’s show.
“We’ve played some gigs in the U.K., and people have actually danced to the music rather than just stand there with their arms folded,” Blackburn said. “That’s what playing live is about, … having a good time rather than chin-scratching.”
Though Clinic rarely strays from 3-minute pop melodies, getting people to dance may be difficult. The aesthetic of “Visitations” is classic ’60s garage and psychedelia mixed with raga drones and hints of American folk singing. The guitar melodies are bluesy but unpredictable, while the music itself, featuring wah-wah pedals and hand drumming, is frantic and propulsive. Blackburn sounds like a throaty Richard Ashcroft channeling The Stooges.
Due partly to the use of cheap pedals that “deliberately sound (dirty),” “Visitations” has a raw sound.
“People were like, “˜How can you describe this as a dance album?'” Blackburn said. “But a lot of the songs are upbeat. … Why can’t you dance to music that is rural and dirtier?”
It is no wonder that Clinic’s music has been described as enigmatic, with critics trying to decipher both the musty fusion of instruments (xylophones, gongs, saws, zithers, theremins, autoharps and melodicas) and the mystery of the band members’ performing garb (the never-absent surgeon’s suits).
Their music videos, as well, are practices in surrealism. The music video for the song “Harvest” features the members in gentlemen’s suits, including top hats, and surgeon’s masks, drinking tea while the Grim Reaper leaps through the harvest behind them, scythe in hand.
“I like playing around with visuals,” Blackburn said. “I think the lyrics are sort of surreal and (the performance) is a reflection of that. It’s boring when bands just wear jeans and T-shirts. There’s no imagination to it.”
Clinic is a decade old and all of its original members remain: drummer Carl Turney, bassist Brian Campbell, guitarist and keyboardist Hartley and multi-instrumentalist Blackburn.
Clinic has released four albums but eschewed the standard arch to more expensive studios and higher production value with its new album. Instead, Clinic asked Gareth Jones, who produced the group’s first album, 2000’s “Internal Wrangler,” to produce “Visitations.” Blackburn sought to reproduce the more visceral and rural energy of the first album for the fourth, while experimenting with new instruments and contrasting melodies.
“What we really experimented with was, within songs, switching from one style to another,” Blackburn said. “(The song) “˜Animal Human’ starts with drones and chants and midway switches into wah-wah and groove-based (instrumentation). I like when those different elements can be placed side by side.”
Blackburn attributes the band’s singular sound and image to his exposure to the works of American counterculture author Richard Brautigan and the surrealism movement. Contrary to many writers and musicians who believe poetry and songwriting to be irreconcilable, Blackburn sees his songs as practices in poetic wordplay.
“There may be some people who see poems as being pretentious, but I don’t think that,” Blackburn said.
“Language can be a lot of fun.”
In keeping with the brevity of “Visitations,” which runs less than 35 minutes, Clinic plans no more than 60-minute sets for each show of the tour. Blackburn has a practical explanation for the brevity of both.
“We can make (an album) as long as we like and people are forced to listen to it, … but if you can say something in less time, it really is more attractive,” Blackburn said. “I think it is more of a punk do-it-yourself ethic: everything to the point and not any flak to it.”
For Clinic, sometimes less can lead to more.
“When we play, … if it leaves (the audience) wanting to listen to the album again, that’s far better than laboring the point,” he said.