Visitations

iTunes Review

Liverpool’s Clinic are that coolest of garage bands. They play the music’s elemental rhythms and feed off its youthful spunk and careless energy, but without adhering to the music’s sonic provincialism, preferring to wallow in a thick wash of fancy reverb and powerfully distorted guitars that could just as easily come from ‘80s skatepunks or ‘90s shoegazer tribes than the original ‘60s artifacts. For their fourth album, Visitations, the group centers on short but pointed barbs in the best ‘60s and ‘80s Nuggets styled “tradition.” The helter-skelter sitar-like psychedelic guitars of “If You Could Read Your Mind,” the pounding tribal celebration of  “Children of Kellogg” whose atonality recalls the finest of Public Image Limited, the 80s-punk of the 1:46 of “Tusk” and the swooning metronomic buzz of the ghostly ballad “Paradise” (sung in a voice that sounds as if it’s struggling to keep awake) all coalesce into a rewarding spirited romp. But this isn’t just a simple mix and match of influences; it's a trippy trip through the backwoods of punk and psychedelia delivered without irony and with much affection.