Liverpudlian quartet Clinic return with their third album ‘Winchester Cathedral’. In the two-year break since their previous release ‘Walk With Thee’ it seems the band have been watching a lot of old Hammer horror movies. The first half of ‘Winchester Cathedral’ is full of creepy and sinister songs, bearing the hallmarks of that celebrated era of British horror –strange glances, mysterious signs, eccentric behaviour and terrifying grandeur.

The album sleeve is replete with Masonic images as Clinic resurrect the kind of mystical inclinations that appeared to have died out in rock music with Led Zepplin, and envelop it with the claustrophobic sound of Joy Division. Opening track ‘Country Mile’ is the musical equivalent of stumbling into The Slaughtered Lamb on the eve of a full moon, while ‘Circle of Fifths’ has alternating pianos that pound like Poe’s still-beating heart. But by the fifth track ‘Vertical Take Off in Egypt’, the unsettling sense of foreboding is soon replaced by a feeling that you’ve been listening to the same song reworked over a number of different scenes. Suddenly it all changes.

‘Home’ sees a change of pace and a lighter tone. Some jazz rhythms are introduced on ‘Falstaff’ with Jewish influences shown on ‘August’. ‘WDYYB’ is a straight-forward garage rocker quite unlike anything else on the album. And then for the closing couple of tracks we’re back with Vincent Price being overly nice to a lost doctor.

If it’s all a bit confusing then only in that oddly satisfying way that cheap horror movies have bizarre plots. The overall effect is to scare you and that’s what matters. While Clinic can’t do immediate, visceral thrills like films can, their music does have a menacing, spine-tingling tone that makes it an intensely enjoyable listen. And it’s certainly enough to make you think twice about visiting Winchester.

words: Colm Larkin

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