Working Mens Club - Working Men's Club (Love Record Stores) - New Ltd 12" Picture Disc

A rumble on the horizon. Gritted teeth, nuclear fizz and fissured rock. A dab of pill dust from a linty pocket before it hits: the atom split, pool table overturned, pint glass smashed — valley fever breaking with the clouds as the inertia of small town life is well and truly disrupted. 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, and their self-titled debut album.

Their eponymous collection of songs is equal parts Calder Valley restlessness and raw Sheffield steel; 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.

Standouts include the nonchalant existential groove John Cooper Clarke — centred around the realisation that yes, even the luckiest guy alive, the Bard of Salford himself, will someday die. The washily-vocalled, Orange Juicily-guitared White Rooms and People, Cook A Coffee which is like a lost Joy Division number from an alternate universe and the frenetic, pew-pewing A.A.A.A.