There’s urgency in Ade Blackburn’s voice when he gets on the phone the final day of April. The Clinic front man’s tone is rushed, like that of somebody trying to pleasantly wrap up a chat before they’re late catching a bus. Or maybe he’s just distracted, the way one can get splitting attention between talking and sending e-mail simultaneously.

But most noticeably, he sounds guarded, as though he’s holding something back during the first few moments of this trans-Atlantic conversation. Despite the six-hour time difference, the almost 4,000 miles between Chicago and his Liverpool digs, and the fact that his band’s ever-present surgical masks make him all but unrecognizable in his daily life, the 38-year-old singer is clearly cautious about being too exposed.

There’s something different about Blackburn today. This isn’t the same character who, during a similar exchange just three weeks before, was genuinely forthcoming. This sounds nothing like the man who revealed the inside jokes hidden within the liner notes of his group’s five LPs, who blabbed openly about the break-up/make-up friendship with one of his band mates, and who shattered the misperception that rock ‘n’ roll legends such as The Cure’s Robert Smith perpetually look that cool.

In fact, the first hint of the honesty that defined that first interview comes about ten minutes into this follow-up. “I’m sorry, man,” Blackburn said. “Can we reschedule this in an hour’s time? I’ve just been doing so much stuff today – interviews and this other thing – that I just can’t really concentrate. I’ll have time later to talk for as long as you want.”

As it turns out, that “other thing” was squeezing in a brainstorming session with the members of Clinic. Although making time to write music together should be an obvious part of the job of being in a band – especially one with more than a decade of critical acclaim under its belt – it’s not something that would have happened a few years ago.

No, then Blackburn wanted nothing to do with his childhood friend and songwriting partner, Hartley. And the effects of Clinic’s two leaders being at odds with each other took its toll on the band’s music. After a stellar debut, Internal Wrangler, and serviceable sophomore release, 2002’s Walking With Thee, the foursome sunk into an emotional and creative lull. “In the middle set of albums, that is when it was the worst,” said Blackburn of 2004’s Winchester Cathedral and 2006’s Visitations. “Everything was affected by Hartley[’s] and my relationship. When you don’t want to be in the same room as a person, you rush through things just to get them finished. And as a result, we’d get a song to a point that it was good enough and then move onto the next one. We didn’t spend any time trying to make them great. It was hard to get a consensus opinion on anything because we were fighting. So the only stuff we could agree on was that we wanted to hurry up and finish them so we didn’t have to be around each other.”

It’s a sordid tale of rock ‘n’ roll saturation, one that fellow Liverpudlians The Beatles captured during the filming of Let it Be in 1969. Then, the Feuding Four recruited keyboardist Billy Preston to join their studio session with the hope that a fresh face would keep the members on their best behavior. It’s a familiarity Blackburn understands entirely, one that Mark Twain immortalized – the one that breeds contempt. “[Hartley and I] had known each other for more than 25 years, and I supposed things kinda began to work in reverse,” Blackburn said. “It’s like, the better you know somebody, the less you’re willing to let them change. The more familiar you are, things almost get twisted, and you sometimes can work better with a person you’ve only known for a couple of years. … Things just got too predictable, and it turned back on itself. Sometimes you can just know too much about a person.”

Hartley never quit. There never was a “fuck you” moment capped by one storming out on the other. In fact, that would have been more emotion that either was willing to direct toward the other during those years. The two were operating like time card-punching cubicle dwellers. They’d show up, do their jobs, and leave, investing little beyond the bare minimum and conversing even less. This was business as usual for Clinic during those bleak years.

But then something happened between the two musicians, much like with Blackburn during that phone call in late April. The pair took some time to clear their heads and returned with a newfound vigor and interest for the project at hand: this year’s release, Do It! It was a break spurred by the ensemble’s two non-combative members, who, Blackburn said, to their credit, never chose sides or got involved during those tense moments. “This was something we had to work through, and outside scrutiny would have put more pressure on it. They left it up to us instead of getting four people involved,” Blackburn said. “But this wasn’t about one thing, and it’s not like Hartley and I could have just sat down and said ‘I’ll be more verbal.’ It wasn’t that simple. We had to keep trying to get to the heart of the problem little by little. Over time, we just gradually dropped our guard and, perhaps, became more empathetic.”

The result is the band’s best album in years. It’s a 33-minute collection of metallic, sharp tracks that utilize Clinic’s trademark vintage recording, the liveliest in more than a half-decade. This was the stuff that helped those early moments flourish and what that dreary period lacked. It’s 11 songs that sound finished and not like a band watching the clock, counting the seconds until they leave the studio and head home.

And all it took was some time apart, to regroup, to breathe.

“Right now, it feels like we’ve achieved something musically that we haven’t in four or five years,” Blackburn said. “And I don’t think we’ll ever get to a point like we were in again. But if we do, Hartley and I know how to handle it. We know how to properly open up and how to tackle it and stop it before it gets too bad.

“All it takes is some self-reflection – a break – and then you can get back to the honesty that’s expected.”

He has no idea.

Soundcheck Magazine, May 2008