Clinic Do It! by: Thomas Mendelovitis Thu:22-May-08 Label: Domino Year: 2008 WB rating 74 out of 100

On fifth album Do It!, Clinic take three songs to work into their much-loved (and by now) well-worn groove, but when they do, the ‘clinical’ touch is as unmissable as ever. A band as much renowned for wayward sonic diversity as static, somehow their sound is always recognisable. Despite being good songs in their own right, the first two tracks sound like warm-ups for ‘The Witch (made to measure)’. And once that 2-step, stompy faux-house beat, crunchy guitars and the quiet, assured snarl of Ade Blackburn hit, the old sound is very much welcome. While there are many examples of this formula (‘Corpus Christi’, ‘High Coin’, ‘Winged Wheel’), what makes Do It! an interesting listen is the broadening of the Clinic palette. Fuzzed-out guitars, myriad percussion, woodwinds, an array of vintage keyboards and slight nuances to Blackburn’s melodramatic vocals serve to round things out nicely.

Clinic are one of the few bands that can get away with musical and lyrical psychobabble, and Do It! is perhaps a more diverse offering than even their superlative sophomore effort Walking With Thee. First single ‘Free Not Free’ is reflective of a quieter mood not found on earlier singles ‘Tusk’ (2006) and ‘Walking With Thee’ (2002). The breezy, faux-country verse and chorus (“when the home is in the mirror, when the home is in a big smile…you’re living for your own and make it known”) give way to an abrasively detuned segue into the next segment, which cheekily introduces bongos. Blackburn sounds heavily sedated and you can almost hear the spittle in his mouth. To look for meaning would be fraught. That’s not to say it is vacuous, however; a lot happens in the three minutes of ‘Free Not Free’ and by the closing, repeated refrain ‘make it known’ we have arrived at some kind of destination. The song is beautiful, as though dispelling the moment makes it more poignant, strange and profound.

When similar moments of beauty are found, it is with the same trepidation. After some classic Clinic in the garage-meets-noise-jazz of ‘Shopping Bag’ and ‘Corpus Christi’ we come to ‘Emotions’. Here almost the exact same model as on ‘Free Not Free’ is applied: a pretty 50s rock n’ roll arpeggio guitar gives way to a middle section solo of out-of-tune fuzz. It is effective but, by now, predictable. In a similar vein, ‘Tomorrow’ and ‘Mary and Eddie’ use the same bluesy guitar backbone. Most diversionary, though, is last track ‘Coda’, which announces that the preceding record “is a celebration of the 600th anniversary of the Bristol Charter”. Whatever the historical relevance, ‘Coda’ could just as easily be a tribute to Britain’s great musical history; the gratuitous solo a homage to Led Zeppelin, and the stretching of the limits of the pop song a Beatles reference. At the end of the album, however, these diversions are just that; amounting to somewhat repetitive experiments from the proven formula.

To the first-time listener, both the proven Clinic formula and these stubborn aesthetic restrictions will hold no sway and the album should be mostly enjoyable. Ultimately, Clinic decide not to echo the lyric in ‘Winged Wheel’ to “keep yourself where you’re least defined”. The strongest tracks on Do It! are by turns the most “Clinic-sounding” in ‘The Witch (made to measure)’ and the most experimental in ‘Free Not Free’. As such, they are a band who hint that their best work may be yet to come. On Do It!, however, while they do their best to keep us guessing, the album’s more challenging moments are slightly underrepresented across the board. That being so, Clinic do off-kilter better than most and are up there with Ween, The Fiery Furnaces or, when they are thinking melodic, even Franz Ferdinand in their singularly bizarre vision.