Working Men’s Club: ‘You’re very quickly in an industry that’s very brutal’

It is also the home of one Britain’s most exciting young bands, Working Men’s Club, whose self-titled debut album’s startling blend of rock and rave has been hailed as one of this year’s best.

For the group’s singer and songwriter Sydney Minsky-Sargeant, the town, 23 miles from Leeds and 17 miles from Manchester, was “quite a middle of the road place to grow up”, with limited access to live music.

“I think there’s something about growing up in a place where there’s really not much going on,” he reflects. “You’re not far away from the city but it feels like you are. I think it brews a different type of person, (like in the film) Hot Fuss that’s about growing up a town where everyone knows each other and it’s a bit like a cult, it feels a bit like that.”

Within ten months of forming Working Men’s Club had been signed by Heavenly Records; three months later two thirds of their line-up left. Minsky-Sargeant credits the help of Sheffield-based producer Ross Orton in steering him through a rollercoaster period.

“I think you’re very quickly in an industry that’s very brutal,” he says. “It was quite foreboding, and it takes a lot of guts as a teenager to take that on, basically as a child. I was thankful that I knew Ross at that point, he seemed to look after me a lot when not everyone else was. Without that relationship I could have been a pretty messed up kid.

“It was a pretty dark time in my life, that period. As exhilarating as it was, I’m glad it’s over. You learn from that and there are certain bonds that I’m glad to have made that wouldn’t have happened without that experience, so there was a silver lining. There was a tornado of emotions around that time but I’ve come out with a record. I’m very much in the headspace of trying to forget about all that now and make more records.”

The band were initially lumped into the post-punk genre but Minsky-Sargeant says he “quickly wanted to move on from that”.

“Bad Blood was our first single because it was our strongest song, it was called post-punk purely on the basis that we were using drum machines when everyone else was using live drummers and single chord guitars. I still felt at the time that we weren’t really listening to what everyone else was doing, we were just doing our own thing, it so happened that whole post-punk revival thing came about.

“In comparison to the stuff I’m writing right now this album is actually quite poppy. I wanted an album that people could listen to and hopefully like but think it was slightly strange, just different from the status quo of what the industry seems to be accepting at the minute.

“I don’t want to be a band that’s just listening to everyone else. It’s a very London-centric thing to do and go, ‘Oh, we’re going to do that now, what’s popular’. I didn’t want to do that. That was my way of getting through a lot of dark times making the music that I wanted to make, not really caring what anyone else thought of it. It was quite menacing at that time and I felt really happy if I’d written a good song. I think the record highlights it was a combination of different influences and sounds. I didn’t have a sheet of paper and a tick list of ‘I’ve got to do this and I’ve got to do that’, it was just what came out.”

Minsky-Sargeant’s interest in dance music was sparked by visiting Berlin nightclubs. “I went to Berlin about a year ago and as any Brit abroad would do, I immersed myself in the local culture,” he says. “They love that four-to-the-floor, pounding industrial techno there which, to be honest, sounds great when you’re in a club and off your face but I couldn’t listen to at home.”

But there are other influences too, notably from Detroit and Chicago – “that really started to make a mark on me, where you’ve got these Black American guys trying to recreate Kraftwerk and inadvertently creating techno, I thought that was amazing” – and from closer to home, Cabaret Voltaire and the Human League. “They don’t get a lot of credit but they were very influential bands.”

Add a sprinkling of Afrobeat and, he says: “In terms of what I was listening to, I’ve really moved on. I wanted more than wiry guitars. As you’re growing up I think you want something more creative but also interesting, at least I did.”

In a way, he adds, the album is “quite angry and it is punk to me because it was going against the status quo of what everyone else was doing at that point in time”.

Having toured with Fat White Family, Minsky-Sargeant says he feel a certain kinship, “mates wise, more than anything”. The recordings they did together “have never been released and probably never will be”, but, he says “there was a nice friendship formed from that... It’s nice to be friends with those sorts of people who’ve been involved in every f*** up and brilliant aspect of the music industry. They’re the only current band I’d actually listen to what they say. They say what they mean. it’s nice to be around those people from a young age, it really teaches you to get on with life and say it as it is.”

Working Men’s Club’s eponymous album is out now. They are due to play at the Brudenell Social Club, Leeds on March 24, 2021. Tickets from Crash Records. workingmensclub.net