Clinic

Great rock and roll arrives in the oddest of ways. Like this surgical-mask-wearing quartet from Liverpool. Frontman Ade Blackburn has an incomprehensible bleat that seems to begin in his sinus cavities and then go only higher in his head. That’s one reason you can’t understand a word that comes out of his mouth. Meanwhile, drummer Carl Turney rides his hi-hat as if he’d forgotten to take his OCD medication while guitars wail and scrape and keyboards add to the ominous, icy tension. Touches of surf-guitar riffage are just that — touches that register familiarity before they’re subsumed by a bracing post-punk intensity. Visitations finds Clinic four albums into their career, but they launch each new tune with the unhinged spirit of a band who are just discovering the power of rock.

On the Web
Clinic: www.clinicvoot.org/
Domino: Artists: www.dominorecordco.com/site/