A band that, perhaps unfairly, always scored more critical accolades than record sales, Wheeltappers & Shunters is Clinic’s first album in seven years. It’s a “fun, dancefloor album” according to singer Adrian Blackburn, but only as Clinic could imagine one. To others it may sound more like a soundtrack to a lost episode of The League Of Gentlemen or some diabolical JG Ballard-inspired experiment in social engineering hammered out in a large cellar.
The stench of paranoia is inescapable. On the opening Laughing Cavalier and Complex, the unhinged undercurrents in Blackburn’s voice suggest there’s something lurking behind the net curtains. Conversely, the cheap, perky organ sounds of Flying Fish seem to obscure a darker truth as the second half of this short, 26-minute album drifts into gentler but still subtly sinister psychedelic decay.
The hiatus seems to have given Clinic a lost sense of freedom, as they haven’t sounded this devious or unsettling – the exact qualities that drew us to them in the first place – since their classic run of early '00s singles. The only gripe is that after seven years, their comeback isn’t a longer one.
