Clinic

Clinic is an idea that shouldn’t work. Four men in surgical scrubs and masks, occasionally swapping the scrubs for Hawaiian shirts, playing post-punk music with vintage organs, off-key melodies and nonsense lyrics doesn’t sound like a recipe for a good night out – but my god it really does work. I’ve seen Clinic a number of times and enjoyed each and every experience but here I am again looking up at four grown men pretending to be in surgery and wondering how they created this wonderfully bizarre and engaging music. Since their Internal Wrangler album of 2000 Clinic has barely changed their sound, and they’re all the better for staying true to themselves; there’s elements of The Fall, garage rock, surf and Velvet Underground but Clinic really are quite the individual band. It’s maybe down to singer Ade Blackburn’s weird, nasal delivery of indecipherable lyrics which often just sound like “me mah me mo mumma mah”, or the fuzzy organs, or lack of choruses that make tracks like ‘The Return of Voodoo Bill’ and ‘The Second Line’ (so good Levis had to use it for one of their adverts) such fantastic songs – I just don’t know! You won’t get much stage banter from Clinic, they barely acknowledge each other when playing but all of the above still combines to make seeing the band one of the most unique and memorable concert experiences you’ll ever have.

Great band, both on record and live. Last saw them in 2013 which I believe is the last time they toured. Since then there's been two or even three cancelled gigs I've bought tickets for.

The band are quite mysterious and do little press, not to say the way ahead of time surgical masks that they've donned since they started about 25 years ago.

Not sure if they've developed a touch of stage-fright these days but would be great to see them once again.

After a mid-career slight dip in album quality, the last three have been cracking (Free Reign, Wheeltappers, Fantasy Island) so would be even more special to see what's left of the band - there's now just the two (Ade Blackburn, Jonathan Hartley) from the original four.