Clinic - Walking with Thee (Domino, 2002)

Clinic
Walking with Thee
Domino
2002

Rating: 7.5 third world patients out of 10

Liverpool’s Clinic have returned with a follow up to their well received and critically praised debut album ‘Internal Wrangler’. This release mostly continues down the same path as that album, not straying too far from their odd mixture of garage, early eighties post punk similar to Gang of Four, and lots of organ. The whole affair has a slightly darker feel to it though; where their first album seemed to envision a light at the end of the tunnel, ‘Walking with Thee’ makes you think that maybe they did a 180 in the tunnel and started heading back towards the dark end. A lot of the time, they come across as a punk version of Stereolab; other times, they could be a really odd out-take from one of those Nuggets box sets. Given all of their influences, they come across as one of the more original groups to surface during the last few years. It still amazes me that they have the amount of widespread acceptance that they do, given the off-kilter brand of music they play. Probably doesn’t hurt to have the backing of Radiohead, who picked them to open on one of their tours.