‘Bubblegum’, the mind-blowing sixth album from Clinic, is exactly 40 minutes long. Usually, long-players by this most extraordinary British band clock in at a clipped half-hour. That makes an extra 33% of murky psychedelic/punk excellence. But there’s a little more to it than that. This one comes from another planet, baby. Here’s why.
Clinic – singular, ambitious, revered by fellow musicians – forever sound like no-one else but themselves, because no-one else could even begin to sound like them. Since the tail end of the ’90s, they’ve beamed in other-worldly psychedelic-pop transmissions from their own parallel dimension (geographically, it’s in Liverpool, but…), each with a vibe and quality consistent with its predecessors, oblivious to passing trends.