Clinic, wrapped in their customary cloak of anonymity, play to the crowd at Emo's on Friday night. Their set was prefaced by an a capella rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone," performed by recent tourmate, Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater. As for the proper set, it was a doozy, starting with Do It! (their latest), and then a short break before a mind-blowing "Archive Set" including popular favorites from Winchester Cathedral, Visitations and more. ...

Liverpool, England, how we love thee so. You have served the world well for many a century, being an essential port for trade and also during war, providing native delicacies, and being home to one of fútbol’s most successful clubs. And we naturally love the fact that you changed the course of pop music by birthing The Beatles but did not rest on your laurels and continued to enrich our culture by supplying endless incredible acts like Gerry & the Pacemakers, The Merseybeats, The La’s (and Cast), Echo & The Bunnymen, The Zutons, Ladytron, Wah! (Pete Wylie), and The Coral to name a few, a very few that is. And yes, the innovative, noisy, organ fueled concoctions of Clinic also originated on the banks of your River Mersey. Clinic was formed in 1997 by Hartley and Ade Blackburn upon the demise of their previous band Pure Morning. Brian Campbell and Carl Turney joined the ranks shortly afterwards and that line-up remains intact to this day....

Liverpool's music history is dense and storied, chronicled by Beatles fanatics, Merseybeat followers, new wave scholars and Brit-punk alumni. The long reach of this little Wales/England border town's influence on popular music remains unmeasurable, and perhaps no band proves this point more than Clinic. Across their rich catalog, the quartet has borrowed from the archives of their homeland's discography readily, crafting an intricate web that utilizes its own patterns and flourishes with precision and calculated attentiveness. Their sound has always been haunting, dark and teeming with rough edges, but a joyful noise is always present: they excel at the fine art of repetition and detail. Collecting the parts they love, they have redistributed and reorganized their sound in finely tuned, subtle increments over time, polishing the same framework on each album they release. Across these albums, they've proven their devotion to the theory that the whole is greater than the sum of their parts. ...

Xachua’Bsh, Washington's quintet has quickly become a buzzing glimmer of hope in a massive onslaught of post-SX dance rock fervor, offering ornate instrumentation and traditional folk elements in non-traditional ways with their EP, Sun Giant. Thick vocal reverb (which earns them unfair Band of Horses comparisons), Fleetwood Mac inspired harmony, and layered instrumentation (tin pans, fiddle, piano, shakers, mandolin) lend the songs a focused yet limber vibe. "White Winter Hymnal" borrows from traditional folk songs and church choir on the front porch purity, but the precise execution of the harmonized round and the pristine production give the track a feeling of soaring perfection....