WORKING MEN'S CLUB Vinyl & CDs

Review: Are Working Men's Club the best band to have emerged from northern England in the past decade? We'd say there's a very, very good chance. Catch them live on stage and Sydney Minsky-Sargeant, Liam Ogburn, Hannah Cobb and Mairead O'Connor are utterly captivating, and their combination of post punk, rock, electronica, and acid house transfers very well onto record too. Their DJ sets, for which 'Syd' leads the charge, are also nothing short of quality. Informed by genre-less masters such as Andrew Weatherall, Ivan Smagghe and Erol Alkan, as this latest Megamix goes to show, the idea is to create these deeply immersive cosmic soundscapes that aim directly for the dance floor, taking phrases and sounds from their songs, reworking, rethinking and rearranging them into something fresh and high energy. Impossible not to make an impact.

Review: Working Men's Club have already gone on a wild ride despite only forming in mid-2018. They were already on Melodic with their debut single one year later, soon snapped up by Heavenly who released their self-titled debut in 2020. As they've grown fast, their sound has raced towards a compelling kind of synth pop clearly indebted to the likes of Cabaret Voltaire and The Human League, but certainly not constrained by those monolithic influences. On their second album, lead single 'Widow' points to a powerful, subtly noirish sound. It's a little more bombastic compared to the angular funk of earlier single 'John Cooper Clarke', but not less refined and clear in its intentions.