Clinic - Walking With Thee

(Limited Addition, 2002)

When “Walking With Thee” came out in 2002, I got the darn fool idea into my head that it was going to break Clinic bigtime in the U.S., launching them to semi-mainstream success on the radio and album charts. That didn’t quite happen, but the song still sounds like a HIT to me, with that menacing, crackling organ riff (even better than “Walking On the Sun”!); eerie, strained vocal; and crisp drumming. It’s easily-digested, indie-informed garage psych, an oddball offering that’s nevertheless readymade for mass consumption. A bona-fide “Nugget” for the new millennium, I have no idea why it wasn’t bigger at the time. The B-side, “D.T.,” is recycled from Clinic’s 1998 “Monkey On Your Back” EP, and shows the band’s raw, Neu-inspired krautpunk side. Good propulsive stuff with frantic guitar thrash over robotic drumming; it’s too bad they didn’t pursue this avenue much further on later records (and despite the rather spot-on accusation that every album sounds the same, I still think the rough-n-ready self-titled EP collection on Domino is easily the best Clinic full-length…the even bloodier “Operating at a Theatre Near You” live EP – a rare one – comes in second place).

This 7” initially came packaged with an issue of Stop Smiling magazine, but is now available through the Limited Addition site for all you Clinic completists out there. Assuming that that population actually exists. Does it?? Regardless, everyone else can be happy with the eventual best-of, which will surely be a toe-tapper, a head-nodder, and a grin-causer. Mark my words: a decade from now, we’ll be sorry we didn’t appreciate Clinic when the dudes existed…