Malevolent Scousers CLINIC seem forever to be hovering on the fringes of your reviewer's attention. They crop up every now and again, with a cool, slightly sinister single and then seemingly vaporise.
"The Magician" is no exception. Opening with a clarinet/ keyboard clarion call hook, it slips into something comfortably spooked via a subterranean disco pattern and an atmosphere that's half droning Velvets and half gnawing, reined in Birthday Party. Singer Ade Blackburn tops it off with a creepy, cryptic vocal and while God alone knows what he's banging on about, it's probably not collecting Belgian stamps. Whatever, it's effective and will surely make great (non) sense in a damp fleapit near you in the near future.
Clinic, then, continue to work in their own strange, but vivid low-watt institution and refuse to administer an easy anaesthetic. Let's hope the imminent new album won't flatline.
www.dominorecordco.com
and www.cliniconline.org
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