CLINIC WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL DOMINO RECORDS

Clinic’s appeal, or lack-there-of, is near-to-impossible to decode. It is true that excessive artifice (in Clinic’s case, their costumes; their bizarre, reverb-drenched, melodica-driven freak pop; their mutated surf-rock and four-on-the-floor disco inflections; etc…) often conceals an essential void. Instead, Clinic’s music seems to be an ultimate confluence of style and substance; weirdo specificity and universal melody; slick veneer and churning emotional interior.
On their third full-length album, Winchester Cathedral, Clinic shows no sign of wanting to abandon or re-draw the borders of their particular aesthetic territory. Their debut LP, Internal Wrangler, was a sizzling platter of bouncy, dancey, maniacally energized organ-driven eeriness. Its follow-up, Walking With Thee, seemed to proceed not forward, but inward. Clinic dug deeper into the tics and flourishes that distinguished their debut, reining in their impossible shapes toward a more reserved center. Winchester Cathedral will offer few surprises to fans of the first two records, and ultimately, will be the deal breaker. Some will balk at its remarkable similarity to the first two. Others will be pleased that Clinic has retained the characteristics that make them so memorable and strange.
Winchester Cathedral begins with “Country Mile,” where a quickening pulse jostles against cascading glockenspiel. Guitar figure glides across the arrangement on a conveyer belt of crashing drums. Blackburn’s vocals, which are reticent and mixed low throughout the record (but retain his whimpering pseudo-language, gargled through a clenched jaw), trace sexy, sinuous lines through the percolating mix. “Circle of Fifths” is a shimmying barrelhouse boogie of punched-out piano and guitar with Clinic’s mournful melodica spectrally bleating like a distant foghorn at strategic intervals. Instrumental “Vertical Takeoff From Egypt” roils with guitars that bend and stress like twisting metal as the song threatens to collapse under the strain of its own internal tension. The faux new-age jazz and mealy-mouthed emoting of “Falstaff,” the coked-up stomp of “Thank You (For Living),” and the demented waltz “August” enliven the record’s back half.
Winchester Cathedral is neither a departure nor a return. More accurately, it is a holding pattern; a vision of a ceremonious band whose visions are hidden within the ornate architecture they’ve constructed around themselves. One is left to wonder if they will ever fully open their encrypted chantries to the eyes and ears of their listeners.
Brian Howe

artist=Clinic
album=Winchester Cathedral