Clinic - Joe's Pub 8/19 - Videos
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 7:18AM British four-piece Clinic has been making mordant yet formidable music for over 10 years now, and we were on the scene to check out a rare stateside performance by them last week at Joe’s Pub in the village. Spanning a bevy of musical genres including punk rock, krautrock, folk, and more recently funk and soul, Clinic have made consistency one of their greatest hallmarks by releasing solid albums every two years since 2000. Having never seen them perform live before, we trooped it out to Joe’s Pub, also a first for us, for what would be an eccentric and uncommon experience quite unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Joe’s Pub, for those of you who haven’t been, struck me as an odd venue for this show, since Clinic’s style doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a reservations-only, sit-down dinner setting. In fact, we here at BAL are more accustomed to the sardine-packed, hot balls backdrop where comfort and class take a back seat to optimal positioning and avoiding fisticuffs with fellow concertgoers. In its place was this classy joint – men wearing slacks and button downs, women who could have been seeing the gala opener at the Met Opera – a place that couldn’t be further from any of the venues we’ve covered in the last year.