Week Strong

Working Men’s Club have just about the least Googleable name in music but they’re worth swiping through all references to the Wheeltappers & Shunters of the world until you find them. They really are. Last year they found their way to Plain Or Pan, directing me towards their excellent Bad Blood track, a song subsequently pressed on a limited 7″ that tickled the top ten of yer actual singles chart. The charts might not be relevant to you or I as much these days, but you can bet the lint in your pocket that it meant a whole lot to the young northern English three piece.

With an album imminent (5th June is the date to circle on your year planner) they’ve emerged from the studio with a slightly changed and expanded line-up, but no less of the tuneage and teenage abandon that made Bad Blood and its follow-up Teeth so great.

Album track A.A.A.A. spits and snarls like those ’80s/’90s Fall collaborations with Coldcut; vocals megaphoned in from across the Pennines…sparse guitars spitting fury…vintage synths hovering and  haemorrhaging between the processed beats…the whole thing sounding like a hornets nest on fire. It’s magic.

Working Men’s Club were due to go out on tour with Baxter Dury and yer actual Noel Gallagher over the coming weeks, gigs that obviously won’t now happen. I suggest you pre-order their album instead and then, when the live music scene gets up and running again, you’ll know every noise and every nuance on what promises to be a debut to rival all others this year. You might even find yourself at one of their own headline shows when they hit the virus-free road in their own right.

As far as guitar-based indie rock goes, 2019 arguably went to Fontaines DC. 2020 though is Working Men’s Club’s for the taking. Click the logo below and it’ll take you straight to your music retailer of choice.

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