Working Men's Club - Fear Fear (LP) - White Vinyl

Working Men’s Club’s second album, Fear Fear, arrived on 29 July 2022 via Heavenly Recordings and felt like a decisive step into the dark. The Calder Valley group always flirted with the dancefloor, but here they plant both feet on it, swapping much of the jagged indie clatter for drum machines, synths that hiss and gnash, and a low end that feels purpose built for late nights. Producer Ross Orton, long associated with Sheffield’s gritty electronic lineage and known for work with artists like Arctic Monkeys and M.I.A., gives the record a cold shine that suits the band’s instincts. It’s music that nods to Factory Records and Cabaret Voltaire without playing dress-up, leaning on pulse and repetition to build real tension.

Syd Minsky-Sargeant’s voice sits right in the pocket: dry, clipped, and oddly magnetic. He doesn’t over-sing, which lets the grooves do the heavy lifting. Bassist Liam Ogburn and keyboardist Rob Graham lock into tight, mechanical patterns that keep your shoulders moving even when the lyrics skew bleak. The self-titled 2020 debut hinted at this path, but Fear Fear commits to it, and that commitment pays off. There’s a colder palette at work, yet the songs land harder because the structures are lean and the hooks coil around the rhythm like steel wire.

Widow is the moment that stuck hardest for me on first play. The kick hits like a strobe, synths smear into each other, and Minsky-Sargeant rides the beat with a straight-ahead cadence that keeps your focus trained on the floor. Elsewhere, tempos shift and textures smear, but the through line is control. You get those rubbery sequences that bubble under the mix, bursts of noise that feel like pressure valves releasing, and drum programming that keeps teasing a drop before deciding to double down on the dread. It’s a smart way to build drama without resorting to big choruses.

That tension runs through the whole record. Orton’s production favors dry snares, treated vocals, and synths that feel tactile. You can almost picture the patch cables and drum pads, the band tightening loops until they snap. It makes Fear Fear a very playable album. Put it on while cooking, put it on at a house party, or put it on in headphones on a cold walk and the detail keeps revealing itself. The more you sit with it, the more the precision stands out. They know exactly when to strip back to kick and bass, when to bring in a nervous arpeggio, when to let a single note hang in the air.

Critics caught that shift. Reviews in places like The Guardian and NME latched onto the darker electronics and the way the band channeled anxiety into momentum, and the album’s showing on the UK Albums Chart backed up that momentum with a Top 40 bow. It can be tricky for a young group to pivot on their second outing, but Working Men’s Club treat it less like a pivot and more like a sharpening. The guitars are still in the DNA, but they’re no longer the protagonist. Rhythm is. It’s a move that suits a band who came up playing sweatbox clubs and who understand that physical music doesn’t have to be loud to be intense.

If you’re a format nerd, Fear Fear really thrives on wax. The low frequencies have room to breathe, hi-hats soften just enough, and the artwork reads bolder at 12 inches. Working Men’s Club vinyl tends to disappear fast at indie shops, so snagging Fear Fear vinyl when you see it is a smart play. If you can’t get to a shop, you can always buy Working Men’s Club records online, and it’s worth checking both UK indies and places shipping worldwide. I’ve even seen copies tucked away in a Melbourne record store while digging on holiday, and friends in the crate-digging scene talk up how well it sits alongside contemporary post-punk and electronic vinyl records Australia heads are into.

For anyone building out a dance-skewed post-punk shelf, Working Men’s Club albums on vinyl belong right next to New Order’s Technique, a Cabaret Voltaire comp, and something more modern with heft. Fear Fear is the sound of a band finding the exact frequency where menace and movement overlap. It’s lean, it’s physical, and it has that replayability that turns a good record into a habit. Put it on, let the room dim a notch, and let the kick dictate the evening.