Public Servant Lifestyle

Liverpool's Clinic bounce back into our lives with a curious ecclesiastically titled new album. Take a pew...

Winchester Cathedral by Clinic

"Clinic. They wear masks, they blow minds." - Rolling Stone (Next Wave Issue: ‘Top 10 Artists to Watch’)

The mighty edifice that is Winchester Cathedral has its origins way back in the in the 7th century AD, when a church was first built on its Hampshire site. The present Romanesque style structure was begun in 1079 and now boasts formidable architecture, the tomb of novelist Jane Austen, an impressive statue of French martyr Joan of Arc, elaborately carved choir stalls with gabled canopies, a visitors centre and shop. Furthermore, this former home to a Benedictine monastic community remains to this day a working place of worship that is the centre of a living Christian Community.

Meanwhile, that fine building’s namesake - the new twelve track offering from Liverpool’s very on Clinic - is a modest future classic of jangling guitars, swooping melody and vocals low-in-the-mix. In short, it’s the latest step on the band’s great crusade to take a newer Merseyside sound - a sound a million miles from the scallydom of The Corals and Casts of that town – out to a growing faithful.

The album begins with the ear-pricking sound of the Greenwich Mean Time Signal, which gradually turns into a smoke alarm – the perfect indication that Clinic’s mutant-pop comprising the strangely familiar and the sweetly unsettling is about to arrive.

Bread

For this is Winchester Cathedral, the third album by the Grammy Nominated, scrubs-wearing quartet, which has been described by a source close to the group as having “a deranged party feel with several mellow Bread freak-outs”. Clinic comprises of: Ade Blackburn (on guitar, melodica and lead vocals), Brian Campbell (on bass and backing vocals), Hartley (on another guitar, the clarinet and keyboards) and Carl Turney (on all drums and percussion). This outfit combines to produce a sound verging from the underground sound of Live at Max’s Kansas City era Velvet Underground to the wall-of-sound on the cheap styling of Amy Linton’s Aislers Set, via a witty style that’s all their own.

And this is no new, fledgling act - for some time there has been a (quietly) fanatical following for Clinic – both here and in the United States. Since the quartet were selected by Radiohead to open the European leg of their Kid A tour in the Autumn of 2000, quickly multiplying with the subsequent US release of their debut album, Internal Wrangler. The band have since toured the US nationwide tour and made their American television debut - on the prestigious coast to coast TV show The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. Following this, their sophomore effort, Walking With Thee, was produced by Ben Hillier - of Blur and Elbow fame - also garnered rave reviews from critics galore.

“Clinic’s tweaked out art punk has long been compared to post-OK Computer Radiohead and their third full lengther, Winchester Cathedral, does little to shake that apt analogy.” - Nevin Martell, Filter Magazine.

Clinic emerged from Liverpool at the end of the ‘90s, sounding as if Merseybeat had never happened, as if pop had leapt from Joe Meek to Lee Perry or The Shangri-Las had drifted into Crime. Their first EPs were scruffy, DIY affairs with a startling confidence in their otherness. The band were quickly picked up by Domino records, who’ve always liked a bit of otherness, and they reissued the EPs on a single compact disc (simply called Clinic - still available and worth it’s weight in something very valuable indeed) before releasing the brilliant 7” The Second Line and an acclaimed debut album Internal Wrangler.

Merseybeat

Because this band sounds like no other - as individual as Suicide or The Monks, as self-sufficient as The Residents, they describe a twilit place: the streets surrounding John Carpenter’s 'Precinct 13, the disco on the inhabited side of the moon. It’s a sinister, sexy locale, with a dark sense of humour and comes armed with a fuzz pedal - and even better, it’s fully explored on their brilliant new long player

Track by track, the delights of a stroll through Winchester Cathedral goes something like this:

1. Country Mile – A primeval rhythm, a whip and some wind-chimes. Nice.
2. Circle of Fifths – A pounding piano, a lonely clarinet, a deserted church social.
3. Anne – An arabesque for melodica and soul guitar. Anne has left her mark.
4. The Magician – Fuzz-frenzy with marimba. One person’s recovery after 11 years in the wilderness to become a professional magician. Presto!
5. Vertical Takeoff – Filthy instrumentation, staggering guitars.
6. Home – The second mellow episode. The quest to get home. Complete with finger cymbals. Incredible String Band, anyone?
7. WDYYB - Punk inspired by Dr Eric Berne. Questions the human need for untrammelled negation. Like you do. With added pianola, for good measure.
8. The Majestic #2 - Psychotic barn dance round a harmonium.
9. Falstaff – A soothing girl-group reverie with jazzy triplets.
10. August - Kletzmer-surf waltz. Mind how you go to this one.
11. Thank You (For Living) - A dirty sampler, a sneaky chorus. The psychedelic box to the fore.
12. Fingers – An instrumental summation of all the above. A chance for a bit of quieter reflection on what we all learned in church this time round.

"Bands this forceful don't often let cool air and sunlight into their songs, but the title of Clinic's second album suggests differently...(their sound is) so spacious it's practically a temple to the Almighty Hook, and every crisp snare tap and bass bump reverberates through the hall." – Spin

Clinic – A Discography

Clinic (Wig64)
Internal Wrangler (Wig78)
Walking With Thee (Wig100)
Winchester Cathedral (Wig144)

Winchester Cathedral, by the way, is well worth a visit. The excellent visitors centre, together with the cathedral’s library and triforium gallery are of especial interest, with an extensive collection of books and art treasures on display to the public – among them the world famous Winchester Bible.

Winchester Cathedral the album is available now, as a vinyl long-player (WIGLP144) and on CD (WIGCD144) from Domino, as is the entire Clinic back catalogue.

PSP Ltd is not responsible for the contents of external websites.

More information available in Music