WORKING MEN'S CLUB

Here to bust out of Doledrum clad in a t-shirt that screams SOCIALISM and armed with drum machine synth pedal and icy stare are Working Men s Club. Named after the wood paneled community-run venues 18-year-old band leader and singer Sydney Minsky-Sargeant used to sneak into under age. There s not much going on not much stuff to do as a teenager he says. It s quite isolated. And it can get quite depressing being in a town where in the winter it gets light at nine in the morning and dark at four. Their eponymous debut is equal parts Calder Valley restlessness and raw Sheffield steel as it was across the Pennines that Working Men s Club s hard edged electronic sound was forged under the watchful ear of producer Ross Orton (The Fall M.I.A. Arctic Monkeys). Guitars locking horns with floor-filling beats synths masquerading as drums and Minsky- Sargeant s scratchy electrifying bedroom demos brought to their full potential by Orton s blade-sharp yet sensitive production.