Nearly three decades into a career built on refusing to sound like anyone else, Liverpool’s Clinic are preparing their tenth album, Wild In The Streets, for release on October 30 through Domino. The band’s latest single, “Energies,” suggests that longevity has done little to make their music more predictable.
Released October 6, “Energies” is described by Domino as a track that moves from a blues riff into a funkier, dancefloor-facing direction. Ade Blackburn has cited Funkadelic, Carl Douglas and Cabaret Voltaire as touchstones for its late-night atmosphere. For a group associated with warped organ sounds, clipped rhythms and an unsettling sense of humor, that is less a reinvention than another unlikely turn along its own route.
Clinic emerged from Liverpool in the late 1990s and became distinctive not only for their surgical-mask imagery but for their musical vocabulary. Their early recordings found common ground between garage rock, electronics, psychedelia and a kind of crooked pop minimalism. The 2000 debut Internal Wrangler announced a band whose songs could feel at once tightly constructed and on the verge of falling apart.
Blackburn and fellow multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Hartley are now the core of the project. They have known each other since school, and the contrast in their instincts has remained central: Hartley’s interest in rhythm and electronic instruments alongside Blackburn’s focus on songs and melody. That partnership has allowed Clinic to change their surface details while retaining a recognizable musical personality.
The forthcoming album contains twelve tracks, including “You and I,” “Model Citizen,” “Back to Nature” and the title song. Domino’s September announcement described the lyrics as engaging with contemporary life through wit and surrealism. “Model Citizen,” for instance, takes aim at hollow political promises, while “Back to Nature” addresses protest action. These are details drawn from the label’s preview rather than judgments based on hearing the full album.
Another influence singled out by the band is exotica—the atmospheric, sometimes eccentric instrumental music associated with figures such as Martin Denny and Les Baxter. It might seem remote from post-punk, but for Clinic the appeal is understandable: unusual percussion and familiar sounds assembled into an unfamiliar world. Dub reggae and early rock and roll also figure among the reference points Blackburn has discussed.
What makes Clinic an interesting story in 2026 is not simply that a veteran alternative band has another record coming. It is that the group have resisted a common pressure on long-running acts: becoming a well-preserved version of their younger selves. Their sound has always been eccentric enough to make nostalgia an awkward fit.
At a time when so many guitar bands are marketed through recognizable scenes and revivalist labels, Clinic remain difficult to place. That difficulty is arguably their greatest strength. Their records ask listeners to follow an idea before worrying about what genre it belongs to.
Wild In The Streets is due October 30, 2026, via Domino. The single “Energies” was released October 6.
Sources: Domino: “Energies” announcement; Domino: album announcement.
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