Album: Clinic

Like Badly Drawn Boy, Liverpudlian avant-popsters Clinic are concerned with matters of family and identity on their fourth album, which seems imbued with tribal notions of seasonal ritual. It's most openly expressed in tracks such as "Family", which opens the album with a juddering Velvets-style riff streaked with slide guitar, and "Harvest", in which the tribe is instructed to "batten down and button up, 'cause all the family needs you". The farming imagery continues in "Gideon", where Ade Blackburn advises one to "just pitter-patter to her farm", over a decidedly non-agrarian slab of heavily distorted psychedelic rock akin to Julian Cope's pagan rock. As with previous Clinic releases, Visitation's appeal rests on the sheer diversity of musical invention employed, from the pummelling Krautrock motorik of "Children of Kellogg" to the extraordinary "Animal/Human", the two identities characterised by a Harry Partch-esque mix of flute and percussion, and a sort of Bo Diddley klezmer music with infectious rhythms. Weird doesn't come close.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Animal /Human', 'Family', 'Children of Kellogg', 'Paradise'