Walking With Thee

Ade, Hartley, Brian and Carl are from Liverpool, but that's where the similarity with any other quartet ends. In fact, Clinic play as if pop remained in permanent thrall to Joe Meek before jumping straight to Studio One dub. Or as if The Shangri-Las drifted into Crime. Because Clinic sound like no other band. As individual as Suicide or The Monks, as self-sufficient as Modern Lovers or Silver Apples, they describe a twilight place: the streets surrounding John Carpenter's Precinct 13, the disco on the inhabited side of the moon. It's a sinister, sexy locale, with a dark sense of humor, fully explored on this, their second album. The haunting bleat of a melodica beckons us into "Welcome." An iced electric piano invites us to "Come Into Our Home" and introduces us to the deserted niteclub of "Harmony." And if these tunes describe a Hitchcockian calm, then the antic clatter of "The Equaliser" and the ferocious "Pet Eunuch" embrace the subsequent storm.