What's In A Name?

Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan, the synth based musical vehicle for Gordon Chapman- Fox, has a new album out, the sixth under the Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan name- Public Works And Utilities. The album buzzes with ideas and invention. A few weeks ago this track came out to promote it, Swift, Safe And Comfortable...

The video and sounds are in sync, the synths and drum machines replicating railway rhythms. This isn't just nostalgia for 60s modernism, concrete and the years of political consensus- Gordon is genuinely angry about the stripping of the UK's infrastructure in the 1980s by the Thatcher governments, the wholesale selling off of our public utilties. Forty years later none of the industries that were sold in the great Thatcherite privatisation scam are better for us as a nation- the services are worse and they're owned for the benefit of shareholders. 

The tracks on the new album are designed to play live, influenced by the tour W-RNTDP undertook last year. They are upbeat, for dancing too as much as listening too. On side B of the album there is a nineteen minute epic The People Matter which fades in slowly with drones, distortion and some horns before finding a cosmische pulsebeat. 

I have a friend who thinks that Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan is a terrible band name, so bad it puts him off listening to them. But I think there are worse band names out there... 

Hello English Teacher!

English Teacher have pulled in some remixes and this one by Daniel Avery is predictably great, Avery building a wall of Stooges- esque guitars onto The World's Biggest Paving Slab. How good is that?

Todmorden's Working Men's Club have done a version too, skeletal acid house crossed with early 80s post- punk. 

And if we're talking about possibly poorly chosen band names Dry Cleaning are about to return with anew album and tour, the eleven song Secret Love (coming early next year). Dry Cleaning's debut, New Long Leg, was one of my favourite albums of 2021, grimy post- punk and flat, non- sequiturs. 

Scratchcard Lanyard

Spent Seventeen Pounds On Mushrooms For You

I've been a bit late on the uptake with this group and their name suggests we're running out of band names but there's no doubting what they do- Dry Cleaning formed after a karaoke party and six months later discovered a vocalist, Florence Shaw (who holds down day jobs as a visual artist, lecturer and picture researcher). Florence's vocals are spoken word, a bit indifferent to you and your life, eyebrows raised perhaps, casually narrating her subconscious ('love, anger, revenge, anxiety, the kitchen...'). Meanwhile the three musicians (Tom, Nick and Lewis) scratch, scape and bash away at guitar, bass and drums. Guitar riffs, post- punk basslines and dry drums, a bit of 80s jangle, some dubby sounds. It sounds like the music's come from jam sessions (in a good way) and they've honed in on the good points while Florence sits with sheets of paper waiting for her cue- 'a woman in aviators firing a bazooka' as she says in Scratchcard Lanyard. They're on 4AD who let's face it, usually know what they're doing.

Strong Feelings rides on a rumbling bass and hissing hi- hat and then a shaker. The guitar comes in, single notes, as Florence says 'I just want to tell you I have scabs on my head'. The Joy Division guitar riff builds up. Later on, after lines about Dutch landscape, an emo dead stuff collector and the repeated 'It's Europe', she drops in 'It seems like a lot of garlic/ Lonely beyond lovely/ You just want to be liked/ I like you/ Stay'. I'm not sure what it's all about but I really enjoy listening to it.  

Bug Eggs was recorded in summer 2020 and released summer 2021 after being available only as a bonus track. 'I was a toasted teenage peanut' Florence says and I think we all know how she feels.