Album Review: Working Men's Club - Self-Titled
Working Men’s Club’s debut self-titled album is the ambitious debut we have all been waiting for. The West Yorkshire band brings an outstanding record packed with yelping energy and dancey, adventurously-produced tracks. It is with no surprise this album had a lot of success in the first few days it came out as the band had set the expectations very high with their past live performances and standout singles. As a result, both radio stations and the music press rightly have given them a lot of attention.
Working Men’s Club is an album that states a clear direction in the bands’ evolution. While their first singles had a more conventional guitar band feel, this album takes an assumed rock-electronic direction that feels groovy, dark, and rebellious. It speaks to the singularity of their leader’s musical vision, Sydney Minsky-Sargeant. He declared during the interview: "I feel there’s been a lack of decent music in general for a long time. I don’t think I could name 10 bands in the past decade that have made me really go, ‘Fucking hell’. I think it’s all really safe." Because of this desire to produce music that feels unequivocally progressive and new, Minsky-Sargeant successfully imagined this hybrid album that seamlessly melds post-punk vocals with old-school beats, housey piano stabs, and pulsating bass.
The album starts with Valleys, a 6 and a half minute-long track, which is more ambitious than anything you would find opening most debut records. This track is a unique rave anthem with a palette of dark synths accompanied by the standout vocals of Minsky-Sargeant. For the latter, “Valleys is probably the most honest song on the record and it sets a premise for the rest of the album.” Perhaps the best song on this album is White Rooms And People. The track starts with an indie-synth, giving way to an infectious rhythm that we can easily qualify as an old school disco beats. Finally, a special mention for Cook Like A Coffee, a pure electro-rock track bursts out into a racing, synth-driven melody. The lyrics state the band’s no-bullshit ethos by unashamedly shouting “you look like a cunt” to the BBC’s Andrew Neil.
Working Men’s Club’s future is highly promising with this bold debut album. For a songwriter so young, 18-year-old Sydney Minsky-Sargeant has managed to tease together an amalgam of ideas into this astonishing debut album. As a band that has evolved so much, so quickly - we can’t wait to see where they go from here.
Words: Ornella Bou