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Aug 19, 2019With Wheeltappers and Shunters Clinic are back, sounding like Clinic, and it’s a very welcome return. ... Clinic don’t so much sound reinvigorated from their break as they have issued a bracing reminder of just how distinctively compelling they’ve always been.
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May 21, 2019As with all of its predecessors, Wheeltappers and Shunters doesn't outstay its welcome, clocking in at just over two minutes short of half an hour. For a band who've been all but impossible to pigeonhole from the outset, this represents another genre transcending excursion into territories many of their peers would never consider.
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May 17, 2019Any fears that the band is skimping after such a delay between releases are soon allayed once the music starts, for what we have here is a high concentration of ideas that punch well above their supposed weight.
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May 17, 2019The last few records have seen them experimenting successfully with dashes of vivid colour, spinning bass lines towards the dubby area of the spectrum and enjoying a laugh at theirs and others’ expense. Wheeltappers & Shunters continues the trend, with music of colour, mixing its cold shivers with moments of unexpected charm.
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May 13, 2019For all its thematic focus and political commentary, Wheeltappers and Shunters is quintessentially Clinic; at once pointed and oblique, its bad trips and cheap thrills are a subversive rebuke to a sanitized notion of the past, present, or future.
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May 13, 2019It’s music that manages to be both taut and immersive. The latter sensation is heightened by the enigmatic weirdness of the album’s lyrics, which conjure up a fragmented vision of Britain’s past, at odds with the cover image of a delightful thatched cottage.
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May 16, 2019And, on the whole, Clinic’s paean to the 70s is a satisfying reinforcement of the current, clichéd view of that decade. It is lovingly put together. It yearns to experience an age that is tantalisingly close, but entirely out of reach.
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UncutMay 13, 2019Queasy nostalgia suits Clinic. ... Wheeltappers offers more of the same--but you knew that. [Jun 2019, p.26]
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May 13, 2019These are novel variations on the familiar Clinic sound. Some, like the queasy synth refrain in “Rubber Bullets,” work less well than others. And some of the melodies seem rather thin, considering the band had six years to generate them (looking at you, “Mirage” and “Rejoice!”). That’s an ancient weakness of the group, and Wheeltappers and Shunters is nothing if not steeped in the past.