Clinic (The Fresh & Onlys)
Lee's Palace. Wednesday, November 10, 2011.
Early doors for a Wednesday night show, thank goodness. When I strolled in just a tick before the nine o'clock starting time, there was a pretty thin crowd on hand. There didn't seem to be a lot of folk out early for San Francisco's The Fresh & Onlys. This was a band that I was curious to see — I'd actually went to look up if they'd be passing through town, only to discover that they would be playing at this show that I already had a ticket to. Result!
But otherwise, perhaps the headliner's crowd didn't overlap with this bunch, who came with a scrappier sort of provenance. Mentioning that they've had releases on Woodsist, Captured Tracks and In the Red might best give a notion of where they're coming from musically — a slowed-down, psychedelic take on the contemporary noisy reverb-rock thing. Less abrasive and chaotic than many bands of this ilk, as if their lineage branched from The Doors and Nuggets rather than punk.
The quartet played a lot of songs from their just-released Play It Strange, but mixed in a smattering of others too, such as opener "Feelings In My Heart" from their first album. That one clicked — it might have left the strongest impression of the set — and "Invisible Forces" was pretty tasty. The songs had their share of hooks, with enough weirdness tossed in to keep things interestingly off-kilter, and yet I came away less than convinced.
Frontman Tim Cohen was generally engaging, trying to chat a bit and get people to break into the invisible "forcefield" in front of the stage. And though there was decent applause, there was not a huge reaction from the reserved crowd. And that might have been one thing that kept the band holding back.1 There were a fair number of quick-hitting songs, but they also stretched out with the longer "Tropical Island Suite", which juxtaposed an opening pop bit, a raveup and an extended outro groove. So even if their name is not, perhaps, truth in advertising, these guys aren't working to mere formula. In the end, this was an enjoyable set, but not a strongly compelling one.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Clinic is a band that I've sort of backed into liking — one whose every album always came with reviews saying the exact sort of things to scintillate me. But it wasn't until I grabbed one at a used store that I really started listening, and after that I found myself filling in more of the back catalogue. Bubblegum, their latest album, was the first that I actually grabbed at the record shop as a new release. So though I hadn't seen 'em before, I knew enough not to be surprised with the band's mix of exposure and anonymity or the tension on stage between control and release.
The band aren't anonymous, but have a long history of wearing surgical masks on stage — which is both an explicit jape on their name and an implicit critique of ego-driven rock'n'roll stage personas. Here, the masks were accompanied by brightly coloured poncho-like shirts and matching toques. And yet, they were, in a sense, hiding in plain sight, playing on a relatively brightly-lit stage.
They lead off with the new one's title track. "Bubblegum" is wry but not undescriptive — although the band hasn't sharply reinvented themselves, this album reveals a more considered sound replete with baroque touches — sounding in spots like Left Banke with a wah-wah pedal and more volume. But the fairly excellent "Lion Tamer" (also from the new one) still has a fair amount of early Wire in its DNA.
Unsurprisingly, without the albums' production effects, the live versions pulled all the songs toward a sonic middle ground, even as the band pulled material from all corners of their considerable catalogue: "Memories" and "Shopping Bag" (from 2008's Do It!), "Welcome" (from '02's Walking with Thee), all the way back to "T.K." and "Distortions" (from 2000's first full-length Internal Wrangler) while slipping in some relative obscurities, like "Gentle Lady", a more recent b-side.
Nominal frontman Ade Blackburn moved from guitar to keyboards and wasn't unfriendly on stage, but the band was definitely reserved and distant, which is about what one would expect. So too their music, which had, natch, a clinical, exacting edge. These guys aren't going to jam it out or anything like that. A few songs were played to additional laptop backing tracks but they came out about as precise and rigourous as the rest of the set. The best stuff came with a loud, steady thrum, and that's basically what I came for.
Given that the songs were all so compact and delivered without pause, the band managed to stuff an unexpected number of 'em — no less than fifteen in the main set before returning for a couple more. Blackburn brought out an acoustic guitar for a "folk song", which turned out to be the the new album's "Linda". But a loose connection was giving off some loud crackles, and the song was abandoned — a rare moment of indeterminacy during the show, and the audience applauded that in a knowing way. With quiet mode not working, the band went in the other direction for early single "Evil Bill", and after the stomping throb of "Children Of Kellogg", left the stage almost exactly an hour after they emerged — precise and efficient right up to the end.
A worthy live experience, though I suppose I'm not sure if I found this a little too bloodless or exactly as bloodless as I should have expected.
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 The band will almost certainly be getting more energy from the crowd when they return to town for a more in-your-face gig at The Shop under Parts & Labour on Thursday, April 21, 2011.
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