Clinic - Do It

Known for their image presentation based on wearing surgery masks on one hand and their combination of psychedelia and garage-rock on the other, Clinic from Liverpool integrated Silver Apples and Spacemen 3 type influences into a sound that was more punk than legions of neo-garage rockers to follow; on their debut album Internal Wrangler. Fifth album Do It takes a slower and calmer approach. With the exception of heavy punk of "Shopping Bag" with its shrill dissonant clarinet on the fore, the album contains songs that generally are slow to mid tempo. Outstanding single "Free Not Free" even flirts with lounge music, although to be fair, they still inject their trademark fuzztone riff diversions into that. Some of the songs are clearly influenced by 1967 era hippie music, with even touches of folk rock here and there. The weakest aspect about this album is that musically there's little that Clinic or other bands have not already done. One gets the impression as if Clinic's sound has not substantially progressed throughout the years. Still a good record and in the good old Clinic tradition, only half an hour long.

*This review was published in Estonian in a journal called Postimees. This is the English translation