Clinic

Clinic

Visitations (Domino)

There are some bands that can't be left to their own devices. Clinic's fourth album, Visitations, which the group self-recorded in Liverpool, is case and point. It sounds like the fourpiece, in an attempt to rehash the acid-trip aesthetics of 2001 debut Internal Wrangler, got blazed and expected the music to write itself. Overmedicated with pedals and effects – all filler, no killer – "Family" and "Gideon" follow kick-drum grooves, similar to the Black Angels, but fail to develop. "Jigsaw Man" and "The New Seeker" are equally puzzling. "Animal/Human" juxtaposes barbershop vocals with funky, Seventies porn music, but even that still sounds one-dimensional. "Children of Kellogg" manages to balance the abstract and concrete, beginning and ending with oddly compelling horn sections, while "Tusk," a fuzzed-out surf-punk tune, keeps things short and to the point. Don't bother calling for the medic, though. This one's DOA.