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Clinic will begin recording the follow-up to last year's Grammy-nominated Walking With Thee in May at Elevator Studios in their hometown of Liverpool, England. The band will work with producer Ken Thomas and is eyeing a late summer/early fall release.
"The album's brighter, more upbeat and party sounding," says singer/guitarist Ade Blackburn, who says he's been inspired by the sounds of Seventies proto-punks the Electric Eels and the Mirrors, as well as rollicking bluesman Professor Longhair. "There's a fair chunk of fuzz guitar, barroom piano, weird percussion and off-the-wall effects. You can also pogo to at least three-fourths of it."
The electronically inclined band aims to make a more organic album this time out by avoiding computers whenever possible. According to Blackburn, the group selected Elevator, formerly a courthouse, because "it has a really lived in atmosphere, rather than a sterile studio environment. It's ideal for the music."
Among the new songs are the tentatively titled "Thank You (For Living)," "Country Mile" and "Circle of Fifths," which is the frontrunner for the album's first single. "Circle" features whips and mousetraps as percussion, and Blackburn says it sounds a bit like Paper Lace's Seventies AM radio staple "The Night Chicago Died."
After the album's release, Clinic will tour Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. "We're working on something more unconventional," Blackburn says. "We'd like to have magicians and psychiatrists as opening acts."
JOHN D. LUERSSEN
(April 23, 2003)