Music critics thrive on categorization. It simplifies their work. In the good old days, if you liked the Ramones, the critics automatically lead you to the Damned and the Sex Pistols. The same thing worked for the grunge revolution, much of gangsta rap and for manufactured pop.

But cross-pollination in music has made life harder for critics. Few bands have defied generalization more violently than Liverpool, England’s Clinic. The boys of Clinic tend to play fast short songs with occasionally unintelligible lyrics, raising the spectre of punk revivalism.

The pace slows a couple of times on Internal Wrangler, their U.S. debut, allowing Ade Blackburn’s fragile yowl to shine and draw comparisons to Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. Meanwhile, hints of rockabilly, straight techno and hip-hop rise and fade in the mix.

Luckily for critics, however, nearly every Clinic song fits nicely into the categories of “memorable” and “great.”

Wrangler starts unassumingly enough with “Voodoo Wop,” an instrumental loaded with African rhythms, buzzing bees and cooing. Less than two minutes later, Clinic reveal their chaotic nature with the second track, “Return of Evil Bill.” Focusing around an instrument that’s either a kazoo, a harmonica, or an accordion run through dozens of effects pedals — or all three at once — the band rips through a clever, intense song about, well, a man named Evil Bill.

The album careens through 14 songs in just 31 minutes, yet it packs its biggest surprise at its most fragile moment, the stunning “Distortions.” Over a droning organ line, a cheap-sounding drum machine and strings, Blackburn sings harrowing, direct lyrics that show the hope found in the depths of addiction: “I want to know my body/ I want this out not in me/ I want no other leakage/ I want to know no secret shame/ I leave cured/ Free of distortions.”

It’s a song that can be listened to on repeat for hours on end, and it solidifiess Internal Wrangler’s position as one of the most accomplished debuts in recent memory. It’s a must-own. nyou