Clinic Bubblegum (Domino)
3/5
By: Matt Tomiak
Who are Clinic? The Scouse foursome once noted for a fondness for hiding themselves behind surgical gowns and masks on stage show no signs of carving out a clearer discernible identity for themselves on their sixth studio album. It’s hard to see precisely where Clinic fit in 2010, and no doubt a contrarian stance suits them just fine.
Based around the narcotized drone synonymous with Spiritualized, Galaxie 500 and The Velvet Underground, with more than a hint of dread-filled claustrophobic paranoia akin to the lurid psychosis found within the cinema of David Lynch chucked in intermittently for good measure, Bubblegum veers wildly in tone. Languorous opener ‘I’m Aware’ recalls the Velvets’ serene-yet-sinister ‘Sunday Morning’; it is followed by the title track, a more conventional guitar-rock number.
There ensues a series of further schizophrenic shifts between platforms for vocalist Ade Blackburn’s brittle, disquieting vulnerability – most prominently, the gentle drone of ‘Baby’ - to primal, Stooges-esque garage rock in ‘Lion Tamer’ and back again via the acoustic lullaby ‘Linda.’
The mundane pathos contained within the Alan Bennett-style monologue ‘Radiostory’, a tale of an unsurprisingly squalid Soho tryst (‘the hotel room was bleak…no noise except the buzz of the overhead light and their breathing…’) provides another small scenic detour, but ultimately Bubblegum suffers from a lack of direction, interesting in parts but ultimately neither one thing nor the other.
Clinic - "I'm Aware" (from 'Bubblegum') by METRO Magazine
Artists in this article: Clinic
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