MAGNET Live Review: Clinic

In one particularly hair-raising episode of The Twilight Zone, surgeons discuss the case of a young woman so hideous and freakish that she’s been shunned by the community. Although earlier operations have failed, the plastic surgeons work meticulously, voices heavy and tragic when discussing her need to be normal. Curiously, we don’t see anyone’s faces—not the doctors, the nurses, nor the patient. When they announce the operation was a failure, the shadowy figures callously declare that only a man as ugly as she will every accept her. And for the first time, we see the woman’s face: a picture of dazzling, flawless beauty. Then the camera moves to the faces of the doctors. It’s a horrific row—not of human faces, but of nasty, mangled pigs’ heads, recognizable only by their snot-seeping snouts.

The Twilight Zone played a trick on its audience—not one so different from the trick Clinic pulled at Philly’s Theater Of The Living Arts. The cast—vocalist Ade Blackburn, drummer Carl Turney, bassist Brian Campbell and guitarist Hartley—know the drill. After all, the Liverpool boys have made mystery their mission.

Clinic’s episode began when the lights dropped and four lean figures coasted across the stage in hospital scrubs and sea-foam-green paper hats, their faces obscured by surgical masks. Their costumes glowed with a radioactive energy beneath the glare of the hot, white lights. The TLA stage, an empty black box, felt as sterile and cold as a pair of steel forceps. Save the token idiot who rushed forward with flailing arms, the audience was frozen still, flatlining, as though awaiting whatever bad news the doctors were about to deliver. Without further ado, Clinic erupted into a frenzied 13-song set, mumbling a generous number of oh-so-English “cheers, thanks” between songs, tearing through two encores and rolling offstage in less than 30 minutes.

Wham-bam, what a great fucking band.

Before the hectic, undulating “Pet Eunuch”—with its furious, crashing guitars and Dick Dale surf workout—wound to a close, an infectious energy held us spellbound. Blackburn’s school-o’-punk ramblings, somewhat muffled by his mask (the small incision made over his lips was more creepy than it was effective), recalled the hazy, distorted and dopey blather of the late Joey Ramone. Blackburn’s haunting wail is acerbic and bone-chilling, Turney mindlessly chops at his drums and Campbell bobs his head like a giant mariachi doll. Yet no member of Clinic embodies weirdness quite like Hartley, a shoegazing poster child who spent the entire show standing in a dark corner of the stage.

The songs, infused with creaky organs and chugging Velvets guitars, dissect all that is sick in rock ‘n’ roll today. The band’s jittery, nocturnal sound draws on everything from Soft Cell’s catchy throb and Phil Spector’s dirty pop hooks to Mark E. Smith’s gritty vocals and Suicide’s extended keyboards, yet Clinic suffers from a terminal case of Radiohead Comparisonitis, especially after opening for Thom Yorke and Co. on a leg of its 2000 European tour. (Don’t think the major labels haven’t noticed the coattail-riding potential here, too: Its recent Walking With Thee is being re-released by Universal later this summer.) Yet Clinic’s style is distinctive with its occasional chitter-chattering of horses’ teeth, splashes from ‘60s sci-fi soundtracks or the bom-chi-bom-chi of drum machines.

Blackburn plays guitar with an ugly-beautiful intensity, violently strumming like a speed addict who’s just wrapped a hand around a scalding mug of coffee and uncontrollably shakes the pain off. He rips through crowd favorites “Walking With Thee,” “Magic Boots” and “Welcome” before splitting into the visceral “2/4,” a sort of demented, drum-and-voice vampire waltz. Furthering the ballroom-gala-gone-awry theme, “The Return Of Evil Bill,” with its distorted, Stranglers-esque organs and raw fury of a Dropkick Murphys anthem, rollicked like a spooky foxtrot on fast forward. You could almost see the silk and tulle hems of the froufrou aristocracy whipping across the marble floor. As Clinic dove headfirst into “Monkey On My Back,” a bluegrassy number powered by deep African drumming, I had the keen feeling I was in some other dimension. The bottomless boom resonated through the concrete jungle as Blackburn’s frigid hiss slithered like a poisonous snake through the high grass.

The members of Clinic plowed through half their discography in half an hour, and we never even saw their faces. Which is perhaps a good thing: Had we glimpsed behind the gauze, it would’ve spoiled the mystery, lost the appeal, destroyed their quack-doc brand of cool. But then again, like Gene Simmons without his makeup, it may have been all the more frightening.