PRE-ORDER: Wild In The Streets [CD]

The tenth album of Clinic's career, Wild In The Streets, takes the current temperature of the UK in their own inimitable style. These dozen songs are marked by urgency, surreal wordplay and trademark wit. For a band determined to chart their own course ("We've always run in the opposite direction to what's happening," asserts Ade Blackburn. "So if anything gets too close to sounding like something else, then we'll take a different route"), Clinic continue to push forward in new and unexpected ways.Nearly 30 years since they first founded Clinic as a quartet, key members Blackburn and Jonathan Hartley's chemistry remains as potent as it ever was, perhaps even more so. "We've known each other since school," says Blackburn. "Hartley was always interested in electronics and drum machines, even as a teenager. He's into rhythms, whether it's reggae and funk or more conventional guitar music, whereas I was always into songs and melodies. I think that's why Clinic works so well." Wild In The Streets is now set to take it's place beside past triumphs like 2000's Internal Wrangler, 2006's Visitations and 2012's Free Reign. "We've always had this absolute faith in what we do," Blackburn adds. "It's relatively outsider-ish music, but that's something that's motivated us to keep going, because it's good to have things that are a little out on the fringes. There's just not enough of that kind of music these days."