Albums are graded on a five-point scale of "Awful-Eh-Good-Great-Classic". I'm highly biased, so don't take it too seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Working for a Nuclear Free City

[#] Working for a Nuclear Free City (2006)

Block-rockin' beats masterfully meet anxious aimless ambience.

Reviewed September 8, 2024

If you've got the urge to make methamphetamine right now, don't be alarmed. You probably found this wonderful, wonderful band from the very first cooking scene in Breaking Bad like I did. What an impression "Dead Fingers Talking" left me with! Killer bass vamping, little quivering synth stabs, that phenomenally deadpan voice (of which the band has two)—I wanted more, and Working for a Nuclear Free City has much, much more, more of the beat-heavy robot rock and more of a grand, dystopic, spacious streak than you might expect. This is a record that captures the UK's long history with ambient treatments, post-punk, Madchester, MDMA, nuclear anxiety, and rainy skies and leaves it all to barrel age, with fittingly rich and multifaceted results.

For fans of the heavier end of dance music, "Troubled Son", "So", and "Innocence" provide plenty of loopy grooves, nasty buzz bass, and eerie electronic touches, while those who like their roll a little slower will appreciate the cinematic grandeur of the rumbling "Pixelated Birds", the echoing harmonies off the walls of "Quiet Place", and the voyeuristic acoustic ballad "Home". WFaNFC's trick is in that they're a rock band before all else, one with a serious knack for distilling disparate sounds into four minute soundscapes that sprawl behind the beats, the basslines, and the dreamy vocals. Working for a Nuclear Free City is quite the hidden gem and an excellent introduction to their damp, paranoid world.