About this artist
Working Men's Club began their career playing angular, cheerfully melodic ’80s-style post-punk, then after one single, most of the band quit. Galvanized by leader Sydney Minsky-Sargeant’s love of dance music and techno, they re-formed as a synth-heavy, propulsive, and — as their abrasively entertaining 2020 self-titled album showed — still quite punky dance-rock band.
Hailing from Todmorden in West Yorkshire, England, the band were formed in mid-2018 by vocalist/guitarist Sydney Minsky-Sargeant, guitarist Giulia Bonometti, and drummer Jake Bogacki when the trio were still in their late teens. They built a following thanks to their electric live shows and Minsky-Sargeant’s skills as a cheekily opinionated frontperson. After releasing a single heavily influenced by guitar-based post-punk, 2019’s “Bad Blood,” Working Men's Club signed to Heavenly Records. Around this time, Minsky-Sargeant’s desire to switch away from making guitar music in favor of a more electronic sound alienated the rest of the band. The conflict came to a head less than a week before a concert in London; Bonometti left the band to devote time to her Juila Bardo project and Bogacki just left. Recently added bassist Liam Ogburn stayed on, and the duo were joined for the concert by multi-instrumentalists Mairead O’Connor of Moonlandingz and Rob Graham of Drenge, both of whom Minsky-Sargeant had met at the Sheffield studio of producer Ross Orton.
This lineup stayed together, and with Orton in the producer’s chair, recorded Working Men's Club’s first album, capturing a sound that was equal parts insistent dance music and confrontational punk. The first single released from the sessions, “Teeth,” appeared in August 2019 and served notice that the group’s sound had undergone a major overhaul. Their self-titled debut long-player was due to be released in June 2020, but the band delayed it and instead released “Megamix,” a 21-minute continuous remix of the album done remotely by Minsky-Sargeant and Orton. The album proper was finally issued in October of 2020. ~ Tim Sendra