Album Review: Nothing But Thieves - 'Dead Club City'
Welcome to the DDC. iT'S A MEMBERS-ONLY CLUB and YOU'RE ALL cordially INVITED.
After 2021's Moral Panic addressed pandemic turmoil with the band delving into heavier territories of frenetic rock, we were in the dark where the Essex-based 5-piece would lead us to to on their fourth. Little did we know was it set to be sprawling concept album. An 80s' pastiche to the likes of dance ravers Justice, Dead Club City invites us into the dream-state metropolis where we can live a perfect life... but only if we believe in it. Of course, the preambles before the album drop have been intriguing, with the guys taking to their social media carving out their future story. A desolate overground service leading to Dead Club City as the echoic synth-heavy Do You Love Me Yet is as good a beckoning as I've ever seen it.
With the album portraying as the advertising pamphlets and soundscape to the cascading city itself, it does its best to sweep us off our feet with fuzzy wah-wah guitars and pulsating synth lines and Connor's hypnotic vocals attempts to swoon in future residents. While Welcome to the DCC is solely a dance bop-pop promo-anthem designed for the glitz of the underground clubs, follow-up Overcome is the detachment of internet culture through an elevating reprise of hope. Whether or not this members-only city has all the answers for it, time will certainly tell - "We're just waitin' for a change to follow"
Tomorrow Is Closed has a more fleshed-out rock sound we've come to know from NBT - an indie artfulness that we're able to see on Broken Machine in 2017 - but still has the synth hijacking nearing the final few moments. Keeping You Around is a character expose within the city evidently possessing troubles of unity and connection - "I've got more hope of killing war / Or seeing sound, oh / Than I've got of keeping you around." Maybe starting over again on another planet is the only way forward. City Haunts is a funky bolstering of blinding lights and swagger, while Hollywood-chic Do You Love Me Yet is the bona fide confirmation that this album is firmly planted in the presence of 80s sounds. With the high vocals of The Weeknd mixed with punch of dance-floor grit of Royal Bloods' Typhoons or even Demob Happys' Divine Machines: it is the perfect punch concoction of fresh rock modernity and classic tropes that made the 80s... well the 80s. Members Only is a rip-roar of alternative rock with NBT showing just how easy it is for them to draw up ice-cool licks. A precedent set from their previous three albums, which all garnered Top Ten statuses in the charts. The album isn't all four-to-the-floor either, for there is Green Eyes, a poetically-charged love letter as it again draws to spending time aimlessly - "I've waited so long for someone like you to come along / Oh ,what I would give, give for one kiss on your open mouth," almost as if the very notion of a members-only club is alienating to so many. Foreign Language is another funky alternative scope of feeling in the groove matched with those euphoric synth swells and lustful swoons from Connor's vocals, but Pop The Balloon is the biggest surprise going on here - unnerving orders from Connor with Dominic's heavy riffage and James' snare whips ladled with distortion makes it seem that Dead Club City is not all what it's cracked up to be. The mirage falls away and the nightmarish reality begins, "pick a fear to advertise / God is quite a cute idea" before we're urged to kill it altogether. All the heaven, all the time? Not so much now.
Welcome to the DCC sees the band delve into dance-enthused 80s' synth hijinks while keeping to their tones of passionate guitar-based rock. It doesn't come without its palpable energy though, as we uncover intrigue and mystery down every dark side alley we find ourselves in this wasteland/wonderland of a city. The narrative never comes close to whether it's a shared consciousness or take on today's society or just someone going crazy in their own head; but it's a welcoming return to the alternative aggressors of UK rock.
Words by Alex Curle
