Clinic - Bubblegum

I used to love these fuckers back when they first started. 'IPC Subeditors Dictate Our Youth', 'Monkey On Your Back', 'Cement Mixer' and all that.. Amazing scenes. I even forgave them for the fact that their bass player was totally giving me evils all the way through a Leeds festival set one time. Anyhoo I lost touch with them sometime around that first proper album, only hearing little bits and bats in the intervening years and now, listening to this new jobber for the first time, I'm kinda surprised at how much they've changed. They're still a high quality outfit, for sure, but the poppiness that was always clearly present in their stuff has generally been pushed much more to the fore (hence the title I guess) with the jagged edges of their sound filed away into an almost sickeningly loungey smoothness. Having said that, it's by no means a one-trick pony of an album with a couple of tracks kicking it out old style and little experimental touches littered across the whole lot for good measure. Double solid.