Trippy Sounds and Some Sonic Thrills From an Energetic Clinic

Everything old is new again--again!--and so the underground is bubbling over with ‘60s-style (or is that ‘80s-style?) psychedelic garage-rock bands. A favorite of no less a modern taste-maker than Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, the semi-mysterious Liverpool quartet Clinic brought its own lo-fi synthesis of trippy sounds to a packed Spaceland on Saturday.

The 4-year-old group, whose members perform wearing surgical scrubs and masks, has been critically acclaimed in its native land for numerous singles and its 2000 debut album, “Internal Wrangler.”

The 31-minute collection of songs and snippets careens among ideas like an art-rock pinball, playfully stitching the Velvet Underground, early Pink Floyd, Can, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and countless other familiar material into a crazy quilt of spacy sonic thrills.

Saturday’s energetic 40-minute set was slightly less eccentric, with the players forgoing the album’s shorter offbeat bits in favor of such numbers as the thrashing “The Return of Evil Bill” and the surprisingly funky “The Second Line.” Vocalist Ade Blackburn added different droning textures with harmonica and melodica, and he sometimes played keyboards and guitar, switching positions with co-founder Hartley.

Underscoring the sense that Clinic’s substance lies in its cerebral-yet-visceral style, Blackburn’s remarkably unclear diction made the already oblique lyrics virtually impossible to understand.

Yet his slightly paranoid delivery gave the songs a contemporary vibe, making the music not just a reflection of the past but a glimpse at things to come.