Chris Balla pointed me in the direction of this encomium by Graeme Downes (The Verlaines) of his fellow Dundein rockers The Clean. Downes is now a senior lecturer of music at the University of Otago, no doubt for stuff like this:

As a musical depiction of violence and mental derangement, the bridge or middle 8 of “Billy [Two]” is one of the Clean’s more inspired moments it seems to me. It takes place on only one chord, E minor, but like Billy himself one is led to think, is profoundly unstable. The backwards guitar enters on the second bar of the section creating its own ambiguity in the process (Where does the section properly start, at the beginning of the E minor chords, or the advent of this melodic event one bar later?). It implies a time signature contrary to the 4/4 backing of the rhythm section, namely 3/2 (count a half time 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 against the six notes) … This is all somewhat disorientating such that it becomes very difficult to know where you are in the phrase, to predict when (or even if) the section will end. Rock music tends to move in predictable four-bar units, but in the end the Clean’s bridge is only seven-bars long, such that, in combination with the earlier disruptions and disorientation, the return of the verse section is precipitous and violent, impervious to prediction.

I’ve also heard rumors that The Clean will tour the States sometime this spring or summer — fingers crossed.