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[sinceileftyoublog]

Clinic Interview: Shambolic and Chaotic

Photo by Rhian Askins

BY JORDAN MAINZER

"It’s like they never left” is certainly an overused adage, but for Clinic, it’s remarkably true. The Liverpool indie rock band who broke out with their beloved debut Internal Wrangler in 2000 last released a record 7 years ago--before Friday, that is. Wheeltappers and Shunters, named after an absurd 70′s variety show of a similar name, is perhaps the best distillation of Clinic ever put to record, 60′s inspired in its aesthetic, uniquely British in its outlook. The album’s upbeat and fun to listen to, and from a broad standpoint, it allows Adrian “Ade” Blackburn and company to capture the spirit of England today, cynical about the future of the country but carrying on nonetheless.

Blackburn spoke to me over the phone last week about the new album, working with engineer Dilip Harris (Mount Kimbie, King Krule, Sons of Kemet), and looking back at the band’s old records. Read the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: How does it feel to release your first record in 7 years?

Ade Blackburn: It felt really good to release another record, because, as you say, it’s been 7 years. We’ve done a few other bits and pieces in between, but to get to the point of releasing a record is great.

SILY: You’ve talked about why you wanted to make the type of record you made in terms of the times that we’re in--you wanted it to be an escape and took the title from a 70′s variety show. What about the show made you want to name the album after it?

AB: The variety show was really chaotic. It was set in a working men’s social club. I thought that kind of summed up what the mood of things are like in Britain a bit. Shambolic and chaotic, but still, people try to enjoy themselves.

SILY: Having not released an album in 7 years, when the political climate has, in many people’s eyes, flipped on its head, did you feel like you needed to respond in some way?

AB: Yeah, I think that’s right. We didn’t want to directly make the album about that. But this has been building up for 20 years, so it’s naturally going to be something that crept into the lyrics.

SILY: Aesthetically, Wheeltappers and Shunters is even more retro in terms of your garage pop aesthetic. What influenced that?

AB: It is more so than Free Reign; that was a bit more of an electronic, jazzier sound. With this, one thing we were determined to do was make it fun sounding. With that, we probably went back to some old rock and roll sounds. A bit more carefree than thought out too much.

SILY: The first couple songs already released to the public, “Laughing Cavalier” and “Rubber Bullets”--did the label want those as singles, or was it you who thought they really encapsulated the feeling of the record?

AB: I think they cover a couple of sides to the record. One’s got more of a circus, variety, character to it. The other one’s a bit more punk, rock and roll sounding. Sometimes, in the past we’d only have one single, but when you have two, it gives people more of an idea of what the album is.

SILY: The album is not monochrome at all--it really has many sides to it.

AB: Yeah, we just wanted to keep the album short to a point, to not see it as a collection of songs but an entertaining half hour by any means.

SILY: What’s the story behind the video for “Laughing Cavalier”?

AB: The video came through Domino. It was [Joseph May] who did it in London. He had done the one for “Rubber Bullets” as well. It’s got almost a British sort of theme to it. They both have neanderthal elements mixed with some circus stuff.

SILY: “Fairyboat of the Mind” really stood out to me from an instrumental standpoint. Can you talk a little about the structure and instrumentation on that song? And who’s doing the vocal harmonies behind you?

AB: We hadn’t really done an instrumental like that for quite a while. We wanted to get back to mixing in clarinet and the harmonica. The spoken word bits on it are Jonathan Hartley, the keyboardist, and the backing vocals are Brian Campbell, the bass player. That again was a fun thing to do. It stops and starts where you don’t want it to.

SILY: It’s off-kilter.

AB: It’s quite a haunting melody. It reminds me of a David Axelrod song.

SILY: Do you have a favorite track on the record?

AB: I think probably “D.I.S.C.I.P.L.E” is my favorite. The more sort of full-on punk type songs are the ones I feel most confident about. Everything doesn’t have to be too precise. It can be rough around the edges. We could record it really quickly.

SILY: How did you come to work with Dilip Harris?

AB: That was through Domino. We always record ourselves in Hartley’s home studio. I spoke to Dilip, and he seemed to have a really good grasp of what we were going for. He wanted to be quite playful putting it together. He put more effects on it than we would have.

SILY: Had you heard any of his work before working with him?

AB: I hadn’t heard a lot, but I had heard some of it. It’s quite a mixed bag, isn’t it? He’s done some mainstream stuff and some lo-fi stuff. I liked the fact he had done both because we wanted a bit of both. We didn’t want it to be too lo-fi sounding.

SILY: What’s the artistic inspiration behind the cover art?

AB: That cover art was from an original album called The Sounds & Songs of Britain, which came out in 1975. That’s got various sorts of sound effects from the countryside, and it’s also got the town criers you hear at the end of “Be Yourself”. It’s got bits of dialogue and sound effects we used, and we realized the cover was pretty perfect for our album, so we just decided to use that.

SILY: Have you played these songs live?

AB: We played a BBC Radio 6 Music event in March. That was the first thing we had done. But we’re not playing live until June.

SILY: What’s the approach you’re taking in adapting the songs to the stage?

AB: We play quite a few off the new LP. It’s usually what you’ve been rehearsing. They sound a bit more raw and punky. They sound like they’ve got a lot of life in them.

SILY: When you come up with a setlist and you’re playing a lot of new songs, when you pick from your back catalog, do you play what fans want to hear, or do you pick songs that you think will go well with the new material?

AB: We always try to do quite a lot of what fans and people would want to hear. We do half a set of that, and then throw in a few obscure album tracks or B-sides, and then new songs. You always try to avoid making it difficult for the audience. It should be entertaining.

SILY: Do you have any U.S. tour dates coming up?

AB: Possibly. We’re looking at that at the moment. It would be in the autumn. It’s been 7 years since we’ve played, so we should get some dates together.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, reading, or watching lately that’s caught your attention?

AB: The last book that I read were Room at the Top by John Braine, which is set in the late 50′s in Britain. I’m always drawn to those British writers. [laughs]

SILY: Does what you’re listening to when you write and record have any influence on what you’re writing and recording?

AB: What I find is that, say, what I’ve listened to in the previous year then would influence me when I’m putting songs together. Once I’m actually recording, it has the opposite effect. If I go in and record something quite melodic, I’ll want to go home and listen to something raw.

SILY: Looking back at some of your old albums, do you find you still connect with them? Is it easy to inhabit the headspace you were in when you made them?

AB: [pauses] I think I know pretty much a lot of the time what headspace I was in. Some of it, I listen to and can’t understand why I went in a certain direction. But the majority of the time, I can still relate to what the ideas were at the time. After we made the albums, we didn’t listen back to them. It’s only more recently we’ve listened back to them. I was really quite pleased. They were a good listen.

SILY: Do you think you would ever reissue or do a retrospective or tour a classic album like Internal Wrangler?

AB: Possibly. I do like that. I think we’ve got quite a lot of demos and different songs and alternatives and instrumental pieces we did for Internal Wrangler. So we could certainly piece something together.

[dustedmagazine]

Clinic — Wheeltappers and Shunters (Domino)

Photo by Rhian Askins

It can be easy to under-appreciate consistency, of both production and of aesthetics. Liverpool’s Clinic is arguably a victim of this phenomenon, having for some time (2004-2012, roughly) settled down into making another good Clinic album, which always sounds roughly like you might expect a Clinic album to sound, every two years. Perversely enough that kind of consistency can count more against a band like this, which first emerged around 1997 with a distinct, vibrant voice and then has kept exploring that voice rather than needing to grow into it. 2013’s Daniel Lopatin-assisted quasi-dub album Free Reign II ought to have been regarded as their masterwork, a dark and rich capstone on many years of producing tight, nervy albums from somewhere within their distinctive melange of post punk, garage, and psych; instead, it seemed like most people thought it might have been a remix album or something. Then they went away for seven years. There was some ancillary activity, but with Wheeltappers and Shunters Clinic are back, sounding like Clinic, and it’s a very welcome return.

That’s not to say the new album isn’t distinctive; just as with most bands or genres that get knocked for being too consistent, there’s always been variation there for those paying attention. The title of Wheeltappers and Shunters refers back to a mostly-forgotten British TV variety show that ostensibly took place at a Northern working man’s club. You can find clips on YouTube; it has not aged well at all (and in fact that band has long used the title as shorthand for a song being a bit too cabaret) but it also feels richly of a time and place that is separate from ours (and Clinic’s) by more than just historical distance. The songs here aren’t so much an evocation of that kind of atmosphere directly (and, err, that’s probably for the best) as they are deeply in touch with what you might be called Weird Old Britain and actively a part of what some are calling the New Weird Britain.  

Brevity continues to be one of Clinic’s strengths, and if part of Free Reign II’s distinctiveness was that it tipped the scales at a record (for them) 44 minutes, the compact, sinister psychedelia of Wheeltappers and Shunters makes for their shortest proper album at a little over 26 minutes. The quartet cover a surprising amount of ground during that time, anywhere from the throwback thrashes of “D.I.S.C.I.P.L.E.” (shouting “Wednesday was a shit day! / Every day is a shit day!” before chanting out the mysterious title) or the stomping “Rejoice!” to the phased-out travelogue of “Ferryboat of the Mind” or the low-key groove of “Flying Fish.” Maybe the purest distillation of the mood Clinic can seemingly effortlessly conjure up, though, is the 35-second “Tiger,” which is mostly made up of Ade Blackburn croon/snarling "You're joining the circus / For more than meets the eye" like he’s threatening you.  

Throughout, Clinic mainstays like clarinet, various vintages of synthesizer, motorik basslines, and guitar licks right out of 1950s era rock all show up to be configured into new, head-spinning shapes. Whether it’s the shivery “Mirage” chattering to a stop, the Wicker Man bucolic interlude “Be Yourself/Year of the Sadist” lapsing into a far-off town cryer, or the mysterious assemblage of the closing “New Equations (At the Copacabana)” eventually becoming a showcase of just how menacingly Blackburn can hiss “at the COPA/CABANA” (answer: very!) Clinic don’t so much sound reinvigorated from their break as they have issued a bracing reminder of just how distinctively compelling they’ve always been.  

Ian Mathers