Thanks to a favorable response from Stateside fans, Liverpool's Clinic are taking their Walking With Thee for another stroll around the block.

The quartet's second album will enjoy another pass, not to mention greater distribution, when Universal Records re-releases the LP in conjunction with U.K. indie Domino on August 6, according to the band's publicist. Domino initially issued Walking With Thee in March.

Since then, the cyclically melodic rock band has amassed accolades from music critics in such publications as Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times with music that's at once driving and soothing, heavy and ethereal (see ).

A clip for the album's first single, "Walking With Thee," received some airplay on video outlets, and Los Angeles radio station KROQ has been spinning the tune even though it isn't scheduled to be officially serviced to stations until July 23. Streets can't wait, some would say, though the streets these anxious folks live on probably run through hipster neighborhoods like Silverlake and Los Feliz.

" 'Walking With Thee' is a party song, really," drummer Carl Turney said. "It's a whole sort of mishmash of lyrics. ... The idea is more of a feel to it, rather than being specifically about anything. ... It sounds sort of deranged but uplifting at the same time."

The rest of the Walking With Thee, like its title track, is more textural than thematic, bounding from creepy atmospheres created by the vintage sounds of a melodica to pulsing electronic beats or grinding punk guitars. Although its sundry tracks could be seen as slapdash construction, Walking With Thee was created in quite the opposite fashion.

Instead of experimenting in the studio as they had with 2000's International Wrangler, this time Clinic had a plan when the engineer hit "record." The result, Turney explained, is that there's "more of a mood to it, [and it's] perhaps easier to follow and more melodic."

The compliments paid to Walking With Thee have brought about comparisons to other buzz bands like the Strokes, the White Stripes and the Hives — who Clinic sound nothing like. Rather than be annoyed by the mismatches, Clinic take the skewed assessments as a sign that they must be doing something right.

"There's enough people who compare it to different things that it stands on its own anyway," Turney said. "Because it's really diverse, I don't think you can just fit it into any category or say that it sounds like anything else. That's something we're really careful about doing. If anything sounds like something even remotely contemporary, we just change track and do something different."

"It's probably a good thing that there's a lot of different comparisons, because if it's one thing all the time, we would start to worry, definitely," singer Ade Blackburn said. For a band that cites influences from garage to kraut-rockers Can to '60s girl group the Ronettes, that's not surprising.

Following their first U.S. tour in March (and some makeup dates in June), Clinic are back in Liverpool preparing a video for Walking With Thee's second single, "Come Into Our Room." A second tour of the U.S. is slated for September.

Clinic tour dates, according the band's publicist:

  • 9/25 - Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse
  • 9/27 - Houston, TX @ Mary Jane's
  • 9/28 - Austin, TX @ Emo's
  • 9/29 - Dallas, TX @ Trees
  • 10/4 - Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey
  • 10/5 - San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo's 365 Club
  • 10/6 - San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo's 365 Club
  • 10/7 - Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
  • 10/8 - Seattle, WA @ Showbox
  • 10/11 - Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
  • 10/12 - Chicago, IL @ Metro/Smart Bar
  • 10/14 - Detroit, MI @ St. Andrews Hall
  • 10/15 - Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre
  • 10/18 - Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw
  • 10/19 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza