Only Hinting by Clinic Stars (Review)

Throughout the ’90s and early ’00s, Michigan was home to a flourishing “space rock” scene thanks to artists like Auburn Lull, Füxa, lovesliescrushing, Mahogany, and Windy & Carl, as well as labels like Burnt Hair Records. Despite its regional status, the Wolverine State’s take on atmospheric and psychedelic music garnered widespread critical acclaim and devoted fans, and became a significant building block for much of what we consider modern post-rock.

Jump ahead a couple of decades, and Detroit’s Clinic Stars — the duo of Giovanna Lenski and Christian Molik — have picked up right where their fellow Michiganders left off, conjuring dreamy, gossamery music that’s perfect for those chilly winter days when it starts getting dark at 5:30pm. Blending the shimmering guitar-work of Treasure-era Cocteau Twins with Low’s solemn pacing and haunting vocals, Only Hinting is an absolutely spellbinding album that seems so much longer than its 40 minutes might suggest — in a good way! — due to Lenski and Molik’s encompassing soundscapes.

The title track (and first single) is a perfect example of this, as Robin Guthrie-esque guitar melodies weave together the perfect sonic backdrop for Lenski’s sigh of a voice to meander through at her leisure. However, the duo don’t just let their music drift by listlessly but rather, move gracefully between ambient passages that lull you in and more structured moments that drive home the emotional effect.

Likewise, “I Am the Dancer” begins with a wall of guitar noise — arguably the band’s clearest through line to their Michigan forebears — that slowly fades away to reveal acoustic guitar strums, reverbed keyboards, and more of Lenski’s hushed harmonies. Her lyrics are largely obscured by nigh-endless layers of echo and reverb, but the snippets that can be heard — something about “ancient woods,” for example — only add to the song’s mystique. (For the record, the duo’s take on dreampop and slowcore would be a wonderful soundtrack for long, ambling walks through your nearest old-growth forest.)

And for good measure, the duo imbue their coruscating guitars and ghostly vocals with a nicely chilled goth-y tone on “Remain” and “Shiver (Walking Over Time),” a pair of songs that would’ve sounded perfectly at home on one of Projekt Records’ Beneath the Icy Floe compilations in the mid ’90s.

In the end, Only Hinting’s title is quite apropos. Even during its noisiest and heaviest moments — and I use “heaviest” in the most relative sense possible here — some aspect of Clinic Stars’ music always seems just out of reach, like the slowly fading wisps of a dream you can scarcely remember because you awoke too quickly. (The denouement-like manner in which “Thoughtless” closes out the album certainly enhances that sensation.)

That’s largely due to these eight songs doing precious little to draw attention to themselves. Their unassuming and insular nature gives off the vibe that Lenski and Molik would’ve been perfectly content to play for themselves and no one else, and only happened to hit “Record” as an afterthought. Fortunately for the rest of us, they did hit “Record,” giving us the opportunity to wander through their haunted twilit music with them.