GOING TO THE CLINIC MAY 8TH @ MUSIC HALL

I had never heard Clinic’s music up until last night. I had heard of them many times, in magazines, on blogs, on the street. But I had never heard a clear definition of their sound. Some people (ahem, ohmyrockness) says they sound like a “post-OK Computer Radiohead”. This means almost nothing to me mostly because Kid A and Hail to the Thief are not records I listen to very often (please don’t shoot me). Others (ahem Pitchfork) calls them “recombinant rock”….uh….okay. So I really didn’t know what to expect when I turned up at Music Hall (by myself because all of my friends are in the midst of finals….something I somehow miraculously avoided).

I got there just as the second band Violens was about to go on. I was eager to hear what they sounded like since I had read about them in the last L Magazine’s new band feature. I scuffled in the stage area like a bum and slid down on the side wall to the right of the stage. Did I mention that I was stoned? Oh yeah, I was. Really fucking high. Right after I sat down these two girls started talking to me and seemed to think I was really cool despite me looking like I had just rolled out of bed and was probably responding to all of their questions with only semi-decipherable word vomit. Maybe that’s the reason rock stars are so popular. Somehow within (what seemed like to me) about 5 minutes, one of the girls was talking about how we were gonna hang out or something and I seriously started to freak out. Had I given these girls my cell number? full name? social security? God help me. Just as I started to get really confused, the sound of the band coming onstage saved me.

The first thing I noticed was that the lead singer looks like that character Sawyer form Lost. Which is a plus for the band, they were really working from advantage form the beginning. They, like I would later discover with Clinic, had a sound that was like a water nymph of genres: totally impossible to pin down. Their intros sometimes sounded rhythmic and almost Libertines-ish, but then they would add in synths and kind of slow everything down. Then they would speed up again into an almost metal-like frenzy. And the vocals sounded like almost an American Morrissey. Really. This guy had a good set of pipes. But it was almost like Jekyll and Hyde. We’re hard rock! No wait, we’re mods! But I was nonetheless pretty captivated by their performance. Mostly because they couldn’t seem to keep one sound together for more than a few minutes.

After Violens were over, I went to the bathroom. When I came back the girls were gone. Probably to steal my identity with all of the information I had given them. I sat back down and tried to make myself be less high. It didn’t really work. Then the band came on and they were wearing surgical masks and Hawaiian shirts. I really thought I had lost my mind at this point. But I sort of forgot about all that as they started to play. Although they played very differently music then Violens, their style of encompassing just about every genre you can imagine into one song was very similar. When I asked the random girl I met what Clinic sounded like. She said “electro-folk”. That kind of describes them, but not really. They are like a word in a foreign language that isn’t directly translatable into English. No matter what words you use to describe them, it doesn’t quite cover all the bases. At times I heard what sounded like a native american chant over a synth melodies or really b
eautiful rocking vocals over marching drum and base lines.

The crowd was pretty thin, especially for a Thursday night, but I guess Clinic is not as big a band as some of the other headliners. Most of the people there were older hipster types. Ones that didn’t necessarily full deck themselves out in hipster garb but then again, are drinking PBRs on a Thursday in Williamsburg. Kind of hard to deny. They seemed to be enjoying the performance but you have to have x-po-mo-ray specs to tell because their enjoyment was hidden behind a veil of feigned apathy. But because it wasn’t too crowded I got to move around to all different locations to see the band. Which kept me entertained.

So after the band was finished I rushed out of the doors, unsure whether I had just witnessed the two most confused rock bands ever or the two most genius. I’m still not quite sure.