Album Review

No band better exemplifies the Curse of the Perfect Debut than
Clinic. Leaving aside a self-titled CD collecting their early singles,
the Liverpool quartet began with 2000’s Internal Wrangler, one
of those albums that record geeks of a certain stripe live for—a
mad, endlessly replayable compendium of sonic devices citing a dead-on
assortment of historical landmarks that moves so fast but packs in so
much you’re alternately shocked and relieved it’s only a half-hour
long. Internal Wrangler exposed every trick Clinic have up
their collective sleeve, setting the band’s subsequent work up for
failure. How do you reinvent a sound that’s already constantly
reinvented itself song to song? How do you top the moment when your
enthusiasm for those tricks comes through most vividly?

Do It! isn’t going to provide many answers, because, like
most of Clinic’s work since Wrangler, it’s a fine album that
realigns the debut’s tires but does basically nothing to the chassis.
There’s a song that can’t help but resemble a brisker Radiohead, thanks
to the similarity Ade Blackburn’s stuffy mewl bears to Thom Yorke’s
(“Winged Wheel”). There’s the opulent psychedelic track that still
sounds like it was recorded in a garage (“Coda”). There are bruised,
moody ballads against whose contours Brian Campbell’s bass pins
Blackburn’s falsetto (“Emotions”). There’s jungle-boogie garage rock
with post–Albert Ayler saxophone (“Shopping Bag”).

Clinic may be digging through the same drawer they plucked their
previous albums from, but hearing jumbled-up Wire, Augustus Pablo,
Ennio Morricone, snarling proto-punk, and Terry Riley (to begin with)
done skillfully and with an active sensibility is still no bad thing.
It all adds to the possibilities for what I trust will be one fuck of a
best-of. Just don’t ask me to stop reaching for Internal
Wrangler.

Clinic play Fri May 16, Neumo’s, 8 pm, $13 adv, 21+. With
Shearwater.

Sasquatch

Nessie

Chupacabra

Jesus