It is officially no longer summer at least in the northern hemisphere. As the days get colder and gloomier, it’s only appropriate to match the weather with an atmospheric soundtrack, and Clinic Stars have the perfect album to offer. “Only Hinting”, their debut LP, is a gorgeous, texture-laden slowcore dream, offering up fuzzy landscapes for listeners to simply dissolve into. The full-length debut by Detroit duo Giovanna Lenski and Christian Molik both refines and redefines their pitch-perfect fusion of downer-pop balladry and featherweight shoegaze: “Only Hinting”.
When listening to “Only Hinting”, you gain a sense of clarity. Despite the longing, the desire for escape, and the pain that life brings, if it can all be made to sound this beautiful and haunting, surely we’ll all make it through? The album is best heard played in full from start to finish, allowing each song to blend into the next as blankets of sound lay on top of each other.
This is arguably one of the best debuts of the year, comprising eight songs of pure beauty. On ‘She Won’t Be’, a thick layer of sound undercuts tender guitar notes that create a feeling of intense melancholy, while ‘I Am The Dancer’ begins with a heavier fuzz, emulating the sound of despair or calmness, depending on how you interpret it.
Recorded and produced at the band’s home studio, the album was crafted across 2022 and 2023, patiently layering FX and spatial depths to give each song a swirling, subconscious undertow. The gated reverb of “Remain” to the greyscale guitar reverie of “Isn’t It,” the record aches as much as moves, daydreaming of escape and transcendence.
The group cite a desire to leave their “industrial environment” as muse, although the songs also revel in the romance of longing itself, in the beauty of hearts grown distant.
The duo’s previous EPs, “10,000 Dreams” (2021) and “April’s Past” (2022), captured a similarly swooning slowcore palette, but “Only Hinting” hits different. Here haze is as much instrument as texture, gauze and melody married as one, traced in elegant arcs across cities streaked in shadow.
The Fat Angel Sings 