{"id":40986,"date":"2008-07-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/do-it\/"},"modified":"2008-07-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-03T00:00:00","slug":"do-it","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Do It!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\">After spending a good chunk of this lazy Sunday afternoon slogging through the latest Raconteurs album (and only making it six songs in before giving up), I needed something short and sweet. Turns out, this album, the fifth release from English indie rockers Clinic, isn\u2019t really that sweet, despite the brevity of each track. But what <i>Do It! <\/i>is instead is a dizzyingly eclectic, almost creepy combination of hazy, layered instrumentation and Abe Blackburn\u2019s trademark marble-mouthed vocals that pay debt to the experimentation and accessibility of their legendary Liverpool counterparts, the Beatles. <o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">This is an easy listen in that no song is longer than three or so minutes, but even that is complicated by the pairing of vintage melodies and arrays of instruments picked up from flea markets with electronics and themes of futurism. This is seen straight from the outshoot with the pairing of opener \u201cMemories\u201d with \u201cTomorrow.\u201d The former switches elegantly from a churning riff-rocker to silky, organ-based melodies in <st1:place>Blackburn<\/st1:place>\u2019s acidic, nearly unintelligible vocals on lines like \u201cMemories are your wealth and warmth here you wander \/ Memories are your pieces of gold.\u201d Meanwhile, \u201cTomorrow\u201d pads bluesy acoustic guitar rhythms with a heavy dose of harmonica, all centered around the refrain \u201cJoy of living \/ Joy in giving \/ Before tomorrow comes.\u201d It\u2019s an essential dichotomy that the band is keen to explore throughout the album.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">For all their eeriness (the band always plays their shows in surgical masks and hospital scrubs), there\u2019s an inescapable feeling of energy on this disc: \u201cWitch Hunt (Made To Measure)\u201d is pure raucousness with Hartley\u2019s fuzzy clangs of guitar and Carl Turney\u2019s metronomic drumming, while \u201cHigh Coin\u201d is a dose of full-on madness, backing the weird, witty wordplay of lines like \u201cYou stitch who you always wanted \/ Now your thoughts begin to fray\u201d with sharp stabbing guitar and Blackburn\u2019s gritted-teeth vocal delivery. Meanwhile, my favorite \u201cMary and Eddie\u201d is a hypnotic foray into folk-rock that finally collapses into a stunningly psychedelic wash of foghorn and trippy accents of electronics.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Not that the band can\u2019t do mellow: there\u2019s still a sense of grace to be found amid the moodiness and paranoia. \u201cEmotions,\u201d for one, is a hazed-over, dreamy ode to the bottle (\u201cNow you see well and without more tears \/ Fill in the gaps as half your mind is gone\u201d), and closer \u201cCoda\u201d is a lovely instrumental jam that pairs a whining guitar line with blips of electronica, all ending in a cacophony of church bells; overall, it\u2019s a nice closer to all of Blackburn\u2019s surreal imagery and head-scratching syntax throughout the rest of the album. <o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><i>Do It! <\/i>really is an indiscernible record: let\u2019s just say that it\u2019s an experience to be had, courtesy of a constantly shape-shifting band that can somehow make pre-apocalyptic paranoia sound stunning and oddly catchy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":29411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8231],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-40986","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-clinic","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40986"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}