Rating: NNN
The very qualities that make a band like Clinic distinctive may be the same ones that make it hard to distinguish between their albums. They’re not the first musicians accused of sounding perpetually the same. The Smiths dealt with their fair share of that, and when you take Ade Blackburn’s distinctive voice into account, the comparison isn’t far off the mark. Sure, there are some differences between Clinic’s new album and their earlier Walking With Thee (now a virtual modern classic), but they’re generally so slight as to be unnoticeable beneath the overpowering vocals and mouth-piano noodling. The track Falstaff promises a different sort of Clinic songwriting, which fizzles as soon as it begins.