Name: Wheeltappers and Shunters
Brand: Clinic

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

A 80424 D

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Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2019-05-10

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Domin­o

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

887828042418

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Clinic

Genre US

Rock-Pop

Label US

Domino

Formed in 1997 after the demise of Pure Morning, Clinic quickly gained recognition with their debut single 'IPC Subeditors Dictate Our Youth' making BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel's end-of-year Festive Fifty. Their debut album 'Internal Wrangler' featured the track 'Second Line', which caught attention as it was used in a Levi's jeans TV ad. The band made an appearance on The David Letterman Show in the US with their sophomore album's hit song 'Walking With Thee'. Notably, their track 'Come Into Our Room' from the same album was featured in episodes of both US shows CSI and The O.C., while 'If You Could Read Your Mind' from their fourth album appeared in the film 'Hallam Foe'.

Clinic is known for their unique stage presence, often performing live wearing medical scrubs and surgical masks that hide their faces.

The band consists of Jonathan Hartley, Ade Blackburn, Brian Campbell & Carl Turner. They have been compared to artists such as Liars, Electrelane, Crystal Stilts, and The Beta Band among others.

Hear ye, hear ye! Roll up, roll up! Welcome to Wheeltappers and Shunters! After an unprecedented seven year break, Clinic, Liverpool’s cherished post-punk pop experimentalists return with album number eight.

The unusual name is taken from the long-forgotten 1970s ITV variety show "The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club," compered by Bernard Manning, which recreated the smoky, boozy atmosphere of Northern working men's clubs for a sofa-bound audience. This album is neither a celebration nor a denigration of the culture of the era in which Blackburn and his collaborator-in-chief, Hartley, grew up. “It’s a satirical take on British culture - high and low,” explains Blackburn. “It fascinates me that people look back on the 1970s as the glory days. It’s emerged that there was a darker, more perverse side to that time. When you look back on it now it was quite clearly there in mainstream culture.”

The album was recorded last year in founding band member Hartley's Liverpool studio, before they brought in Dilip Harris (King Krule, Sons Of Kemet, Mount Kimbie) to mix it. “We thought it felt right to make a fun, dancefloor album in these dark and conservative times,” Blackburn continues. Fun, sure, but this is Clinic – their brand of fun oozes with menace. The Great Britain that Clinic are evoking is not that ancient, bucolic past of village green cricket, half a mild and hanky-waving Morris Dancers that many seem so determined that the country should return to, but a rather more sleazy past. Clinic’s reverie is for a time when Blackpool was the pleasure capital of the kingdom and the public was kept entertained by travelling circuses and the dirty glamour of the funfair; tacky end of the pier merriment and enforced fun at Butlins; when bell-ringing town criers bellowed their nonsensical broadsides into the ether.

For most bands about to enter their third decade as an entity the well would be running dry, but eight albums in and Clinic still retain the ability to surprise. Clocking in at just over 28 minutes, Wheeltappers and Shunters is an absolute blast, rich in detail and sonic intrigue, those precious minutes stuffed with ideas.

Wheeltappers and Shunters

Music US