The 20 Best Albums of 2007 - Working for a Nuclear Free City: "Businessmen and Ghosts"

4.  I must confess part of the reason I placed this album on the list was because I didn't have a blog last year where I could include this band's wonderful self-titled debut on a "20 Best Albums of 2006" list. Thankfully, in 2007 Working for a Nuclear Free City decided to repackage their debut as a double album for their first release in the US.

Now, I've used this space before to explain what makes WfaNFC so likeable, and on Businessmen and Ghosts they don't do anything to sway my faith. In fact, the inclusion of 11 additional songs not found on their UK-only debut merely reinforces the thought that their future is bright. One of those new tracks, "All American Taste", might be the most memorable highlight on the album's first disc. The combination of echoed strumming, machine-like drums and laser beam synths create a wonderful dance-y shoegaze groove that weaves in an out of frenetic and subtle moods.  This propensity to build up, draw down and build up again best manifests itself in "England", where WfaNC goes from dreamy chill-out to full on psychedelic space jam within five and half minutes, drawing upon seemingly every major British musical genre (Madchester, Paisley Underground, new wave, electronica, etc.) in the process.

Perhaps what makes Businessmen and Ghosts so special is that WfaNFC manages to sound forward-thinking while creating this music that owes so much to the historical canon of popular English music. It's definitely not an easy thing to accomplish, and the fact that this quartet from Manchester is able to do it here so flawlessly should warrant its own canonization.

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Song of the Day - Working for a Nuclear Free City - "Rocket"

OK, so normally I wouldn't write two posts about the same band in one day, but since my earlier post about this band didn't include any music to stream, I figure that it was only logical to give you a little taste of why I am can't stop listening to this band.

The title track from the Rocket EP encapsulates all that I love about Working for a Nuclear Free City's music. It begins with an understated acoustic strumming and steadily builds with groovy synths and eventually climaxes with a crashing wave of sampled piano (taken from their friend's grand piano at the house where the song was recorded) and cymbals before lead singer Phil Kay even gets to the chorus. After things come back down to...um...earth (the cheesy space reference wasn't intentional, I promise) Kay repeats a chorus of escapist declarations: "If you feel unclean better bleach your body/If you feel the hate better kill somebody/If you're feeling ill better leave your body/If you wanna leave better build a rocket" and then whole thing builds up again to this fantastic point where you feel a real moment of anticipation before the final release. At that point, the whole song just explodes into a beautiful cacophony of synths, samples, pulsating bass and an avalanche of drums.

It really is a rare thing when a band sets out to form an ambitious sound and ends up with a creation that holds up to such a lofty goal. In the end, Rocket's sound is so big that it can't help but launch itself into interstellar territory.
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Band You Should Be Listening To – Working for a Nuclear Free City

Welcome to the first installment of a semi-regular (read: whenever I feel like it) feature called Band You Should Be Listening To. As you may guess from the title, the purpose of this feature is to alert you to bands/artists that you otherwise may have never heard of. There are only two criteria that will land any artist into this pace; 1) a general lack of buzz or attention from the traditional mediums of music discovery (magazines, TV, radio, popular websites, etc.) and 2) they have to make really fucking awesome music (as decided by me).

The inaugural subject of this feature series, Working for a Nuclear Free City, was actually introduced to me via the love-them-or-hate-them (or both, in my case) indie juggernaut known as Pitchfork Media. While you may think this disqualifies them from the first criteria, positive reviews notwithstanding, WfaNFC has still received very little attention from the Pitchfork crowd. Which is a shame, because the music they're making is leaps and bounds better than what I've heard from other ‘buzzworthy’ bands (I'm looking in your direction, Battles)

Their name comes from their peacenik hometown of Manchester celebrating its 25^th year of being a “Nuclear Free Zone,” yet it wouldn’t be inaccurate to describe some of their music as “radioactive.” Much of their superb self-titled debut album owes its psych-dance sound to Manchester legends like Primal Scream, 808 State and Happy Mondays, while also borrowing Slowdive’s noisy guitar drone and (at times) beats reminiscent of early Chemical Brothers.

What makes their debut album so great is how each song flows from one to the next, like the whole album is one composition with many different movements. Songs like “Dead Fingers Talking” and “Innocense” could find a home on any dance floor, while the atmospherics of “Over” and “Quiet Place” provide a perfect soundtrack to the build up and comedown of an all night outing in the city, respectively. Another standout track, “So,” shows off WfaNFC’s range by taking you on a psychedelic ride punctuated with distorted guitars and a popping beat that sounds like firecrackers being set off.

The band recently put out an excellent EP titled Rocket and is currently slated to issue their first proper US release, Businessmen & Ghosts, which is supposed to be the self-titled album plus the Rocket EP and other previously unreleased tracks. Look out for it October 6^th. Until then you can stream the entire album over at the Deaf, Dumb + Blind Records website.

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