Clinic, Liverpool’s most recent art-rock import, gave fans a musical checkup as they brought their genre-bending sound to the Mershon on Wednesday.

The band previewed many new and energetic tracks from their forthcoming effort, “Winchester Cathedral,” to a young and artistically motivated crowd. The four musicians played in front of a video screen flashing rapid-fire synchronous footage to a Brit-Art soundtrack.

Donning surgical masks and regulation-style aqua hospital scrubs, the quartet intrigued even the most ardent of fans.

The band employs a distinctively uncanny take on ’60s and ’70s garage rock and blend enough influences to leave many critics salivating to plug in their personal favorites in contrast.

Rest assured, the comparisons pile up high, as is usually the case with ambitious UK rock groups among American crowds. Many are quick to accuse Clinic of mimicing Radiohead and Velvet Underground, but this is misleading at best. Although they found themselves opening for America’s favorite English band on the Kid A tour, they dig deeper into the weird and inspiration bins.

As self-proclaimed fans of the Residents, Clinic explores the realms of obscure noise making to surprisingly accessible means. As such, they have found an increasingly welcoming fan-base among indie-rockers and electronica-listeners within the art house music scene.

College audiences have proven to be vital for bands of this nature, so it is little wonder why they chose to embark on an artsy tour schedule, including stops like Chicago’s Abby Pub and Los Angeles’ Knitting Factory instead of venues like the House of Blues or our own Newport Music Hall.

Live on stage, the four lads kept things moving along briskly from song to song, wasting little time between songs to make sitches and gear updates. Lead singer Ade Blackburn and keyboardist/rhythm guitarist Hartley traded positions on many songs, somewhat making Blackburn the indie version of Coldplay’s Chris Martin.

Blackburn fascinated the crowd by including the melodica, a rough equivalent of a miniature keyboard with a plastic mouth tube attached which produces sounds like a cross between an electronic harmonica and an accordion.

All members of the group contributed in some form to the vocal proceedings of the music, which is reminiscent of another famous Liverpudian quartet that Clinic is quick to distance themselves from. Their website states that, “Clinic sounds like The Beatles never happened, as if pop remained in permanent thrall to Joe Meek before jumping straight to Studio One dub.”

If Beatle blasphemy pushes these guys into Oasis territory in one’s mind, do not get it completely twisted: these chaps know who influenced their sound. They have been careful and witty students of the US and UK’s finest rock bands, including Suicide, the Monks, Joy Division, and even the Beach Boys.

Their musical apprenticeship has paid off ferociously. Clinic sounds less like the torchbearers for garage rock than they do art-rockers pushing pop music progressively into a clever synthesis of the obtuse and accessible.