Just to get it out of the way, Working for a Nuclear Free City apparently took their name as a means of poking fun at the city council of hometown Manchester, England, as their name was a slogan of the council that seemed a bit funny if not ironic. There is certainly nothing ironic about the four men, whose shimmering guitars and complex synthesizer beeps earnestly recall the last 30 years of music from the Manchester scene while providing soothing dance melodies for fans of Britpop.
Their show at DC9 Sunday night, unfortunately, was beset by some technical difficulties, and it often seemed the band was operating on the fly, threatening to either fall apart or transcend into something quite a bit more fabulous at any given moment. Thankfully, they were skilled enough to squeeze more of the fabulousness out of their music rather than letting a few dead patches between songs bring them down. Phil Kay worked his Jen SX1000 synthesizer with fervent genius, delighting the crowd of 60 or more who had come to see the band before they hit the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.
Fellow concert-goer Michael Darpino brilliantly described much of the WFANFC sound as electronic shoegazer, which certainly captures the dominant synth overtones as they sometimes carry a very fuzzy sound. Nowhere is this better demonstrated in their song “Dead Fingers Talking,” which truly takes you on a trip through cosmic dust with zips and zings. I quite wanted a bit more in-your-face uptempo dance music, but the steady pulsing of the band’s instruments kept me pleasantly tapping and shuffling along well enough!
I picked up the US version of Businessmen & Ghosts, the band’s very cool debut album, for $10 at the show, which was terrific for a double album of material.
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