It begins with the ear-pricking sound of the Greenwich Time Signal turning into a smoke alarm – the perfect indication that Clinic’s mutant-pop comprising the strangely familiar and the sweetly unsettling is about to arrive.
Welcome to Winchester Cathedral, the third album by the Grammy Nominated, scrubs-wearing quartet from Liverpool. Described by a source close to the group as having “a deranged party feel with several mellow Bread freak-outs”.
Clinic emerged from Liverpool at the end of the ‘90s, sounding as if Merseybeat had never happened, as if pop had leapt from Joe Meek to Lee Perry or The Shangri-Las had drifted into Crime. Their first EPs were scruffy DIY affairs with a startling confidence in their otherness. The band were quickly picked up by Domino Records, who’ve always liked a bit of otherness, and they reissued the EPs on a single CD before releasing the brilliant, smash-in-a-parallel-universe 45 “The Second Line” and the acclaimed debut album “Internal Wrangler”.
Clinic were quickly championed by the likes of Radiohead, who invited them onto their “Kid A” tour and the band began to attract fans all over the world. When the second album “Walking With Thee” appeared, early in 2002, the United States sat up and took notice in a big way. They have since toured America six times and have appeared on The David Letterman Show and were nominated for a Grammy last year for the Best Alternative Music Album for “Walking With Thee”.