An obscure monotone collage of plants, buildings and furniture juxtaposed with Ruben-esque females and Victorian gents graces the cover of Visitations, the fourth album from everyone’s favourite Liverpudlian oddballs Clinic.
Like an indie Addams Family, dark and macabre with tongue planted firmly in cheek, the band occupy a completely different space to most of their contemporaries. Their distinctive sonic concoctions are sometimes like riding a ghost train: eerie, unpredictable and quite brief (the longest track clocks in at a mere three minutes, 48 seconds) but ultimately enjoyable. The newfound freedom of studio ownership finds them in playful form here, in stark contrast to 2004’s sombre Winchester Cathedral. The first single ‘Harvest’ is distinctively Clinic, but resolutely upbeat. ‘Animal/Human’ doffs a cap to the Velvets with its haunting ‘Venus In Furs’ atmospheres, and elsewhere the outer limits of their punk sensibilities find a home on ‘Tusk’.
The Clinic staple elements of distorted guitars, eastern melodies, autoharp and clarinet fuse together to create their trademark discordant sound. Ade Blacburn’s tortured vocals (spookily reminiscent of Peter Lorre) are rarely in the first person, as if he’s merely a medium for the songs’ messages. This apparent detachment is part of the Clinic identity, the anonymity, the masks, the aural dissonance…it only leaves us wanting more.