Wanted Med Or Alive

Liverpudlian art-punks Clinic have showcased a different side of themselves on their latest album, Bubblegum, which as the title suggests contains a fair number of memorable pop melodies. Over the past ten years, the band have produced a stream of consistently excellent albums, and while they have never enjoyed a mainstream breakthrough – and to be fair, have never sought one – they enjoyed considerable critical acclaim, and remain beloved by A-list contemporaries such as Radiohead and Arcade Fire.

Clinic’s singer, Ade Blackburn, says the band wholeheartedly embraced the opportunity to hone their songwriting chops on the wonderful Bubblegum.
“On previous records, we’d always based the songs around rhythms,” notes Ade. “It would begin with a drum track and then we’d place everything on top of that. With Bubblegum, we approached the tunes in a slightly more tongue-in-cheek, singer-songwriter type way. The basic songs were all written on acoustic guitar, so instead of being about rhythms, the tracks were more about melodies.”
I first became a fan of Clinic when I saw them support Radiohead at Punchestown Racecourse in Kildare a decade ago. Thom Yorke has remained a notable fan of the band ever since, and earlier this year even dropped in one of their tracks during a DJ slot on Gilles Peterson’s BBC Radio One show.
“When we did that tour with Radiohead, we’d just released our first album,” recalls Ade. “So it was really seeing things completely from the other side – we always consider ourselves to be anything but mainstream. It was quite flattering, the reaction we got off the audiences, I think they felt there was definitely something to the music. As to how it happened, I think Thom Yorke had heard our first album, Internal Wrangler. They’ve got quite a history of choosing original or unusual support bands.”
In general, Clinic enjoyed a hell of a year following the release of Internal Wrangler – not only did they support Radiohead, but they were also handpicked by Scott Walker to appear at the Meltdown Festival he curated, on a bill which included Thom Yorke and co. and Blur. They were to enjoy more major recognition a few years later when Arcade Fire also invited them out on tour.
“Arcade Fire had done an impromptu cover of one of our songs, ‘Distortions’,” reflects Ade. “Then they asked us to do those gigs with them, and perhaps that was even weirder again than Radiohead. They both have big mainstream audiences so it was fairly surreal. But the gigs did go well – like Radiohead, Arcade Fire have got an intelligent audience who are open to new things.”
Going back go Clinic’s early days, one of the first EPs had a particularly great title – IPC Subeditors Dictate Our Youth. I take it the group aren’t the biggest fans of the NME then?
“When we did that, it was about ’96,” says Ade, “and I thought throughout the whole ’90s the NME was kind of ridiculous. But we’ve seen the way it’s gone – it sort of killed itself off in the ’90s and it’s struggled ever since.”

Bubblegum is out now on Domino.