WORKING MEN’S CLUB
Fear Fear (Heavenly)
If the rapturous response to Working Men’s Club’s spectacularly good self-titled debut left frontman Syd Minsky-Sargeant feeling burdened by the weight of expectation for its follow-up, then it doesn’t show. Fear Fear may be a more challenging and less immediate listen, and delves deeper into the dark, but there’s no denying its quality.
Bristling with edgy energy, the LP is as much a product of its troubled times – pandemic, political divisions, social tensions – as it of its precocious creator. Singles Widow and Ploys, plus Cut (which replicates the trippy Mancunian motorik of Angel), form a familiar, fan-pleasing core. Elsewhere, though, the album serves up thumping electronics and whipcrack snares – house music made by post-punk proto-industrialists, the Hyde to synthpop’s Jekyll.
The title track of Fear Fear is exemplary, seemingly recorded in an underground bunker during an air raid, the occupants improvising percussion by bashing exposed pipework. Sometimes you just have to say: fuck it, let’s dance.
words BEN WOOLHEAD
