Wheeltappers And Shunters (Vinyl)

Hear ye, hear ye! Roll up, roll up! Welcome to Wheeltappers and Shunters!

After an unprecedented seven year break, Clinic, Liverpool's cherished post-punk pop experimentalists return with album number eight, released on May 10th, by Domino. The unusual name is taken from the long-forgotten 1970s ITV variety show The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, compered by Bernard Manning, which recreated the smoky, boozy atmosphere of Northern working men's clubs for a sofa-bound audience.

"It's been a pisstake thing between us for quite a few years," reveals Ade Blackburn, Clinic spokesman, of the show that the album title references. "Whenever we'd talk about a song sounding too 'cabaret' or too nice, we'd say, 'That's a bit Wheeltappers and Shunters'.

This album is neither a celebration nor a denigration of the culture of the era in which Blackburn and his collaborator-in-chief, Hartley, grew up. "It's a satirical take on British culture - high and low," explains Blackburn. "It fascinates me that people look back on the 1970s as the glory days. It's emerged that there was a darker, more perverse side to that time. When you look back on it now it was quite clearly there in mainstream culture."

The first track to be shared from Wheeltappers and Shunters is 'Rubber Bullets', fifties rock'n'roll is the order of the day as Blackburn grunts "Neanderthal" over a twanging rockabilly guitar riff à la Scotty Moore.