This week’s ALT 104.5 New Music Discovery Of The Week is “Overcome” by Nothing but Thieves
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Welcome to Dead Club City. A place, a mindset, a metaverse with cocktails, where privilege and alienation go toe-to-toe.
‘Welcome to the DCC’: the hip-swinging, fist-punching, sky-scraping first single from the fourth album by Nothing But Thieves. An advertisement for the songs and ideas to come, it’s the perfect curtain-raiser. Think: hard rock Daft Punk. Then think: I better get my dancing boots on.
Welcome to Dead Club City: a concept album bursting with characters, concepts and stories. Recorded and self-produced by Nothing But Thieves guitarist Dom Craik over six months in a recording studio bunker in the Essex countryside, the 11 songs are vividly alive with big ideas, pop hooks, soul flourishes, hip hop beats, crunchy riffs, Conor Mason’s remarkable and slinky falsetto, and absolutely no prog-rock mentalism* of the kind normally associated with concept albums. *OK there is a bit of that. But it’s fcking banging.
Welcome to the second age of Nothing But Thieves. Ten years young and a decade into their career, the Southend five-piece have never sounded as vital, inspired and blisteringly adventurous as they do on Dead Club City.
The horizon-wide ambition of Dead Club City began when none of us could see further than the end of our noses, when touring and promotion of 2020’s Moral Panic was curtailed by you-know-what.
“We struggled with that period,” admits guitarist Joe Langridge-Brown. Even though the record was a Number Three hit, with lead single ‘Is Everybody Going Crazy?’ a global streaming smash that’s currently sitting on almost 50 million Spotify plays, “it's really hard to release an album and not play any shows around it. Especially as our USP as a band is the live element.”
With nowhere else to put their creative energies, the band – Mason, Langridge-Brown, Craik, Philip Blake (bass), James Price (drums) – kept writing. The EP Moral Panic II was the first result, released in summer 2021, a couple of months before NBT could, at last, serve themselves and their fans and tour, their dates including a sell-out at London’s O2 Arena and Amsterdam's Ziggo Dome, and totalling over 110,000 ticket sales across the entire run.
Back home, NBT broke down and rebuilt their entire studio from scratch, renaming it Dead Club City Studios – a space that offered the seclusion and freedom to play, in every sense.
“We landed on something that was a little bit more playful, more glam,” says Craik of the writing of a cornerstone track that’s also pegged – amidst fierce competition – as a single. But his words easily apply to the whole Dead Club City spirit. “That song takes itself less seriously than a lot of our other music does. We added textures and sounds that we wouldn't normally feel comfortable using.”
Set free, Nothing But Thieves’ imagination soared – and a concept developed. These stories and connections will be revealed across 2023, as songs, visuals and exclusive fan opportunities to join the Dead Club City are rolled out over the coming months.
Listen out for a spacey trip hop ballad where Mason shoots for a “Mac Miller-esque, really reserved, R&B vocal”. And for the track that’s the lipsmacking sound of a beefed-up Prince letting rip with a sinuously sassy falsetto. And for the future anthem that suggests Don Henley’s ‘Boys of Summer’ relocated from California to the Essex coast.
Mason grins at the thought of the band’s unabashed, pedal-to-the-metal, road-trip anthem. “A friend of ours in another band said the great thing about us is that we're not scared of a chorus or a melody. But I don't think we've ever really thought about it. It always comes down to what you're listening to. We all have such crazy expansive musical tastes,” adds a rock band frontman here reborn as a great British soul vocalist. Mason has never sounded so fly, Nothing But Thieves rarely so loose.
“There's a risk in doing a record like this,” acknowledges Craik. “Concepts can go wrong, or just be weak. And recording it ourselves can go terribly! So we all had to be switched on and questioning everything.” The result? “An album that embodies everything about the band right now.”
And, finally… it’s going to be a blast to tour, right?
“Oh, yeah!” beams Mason. “This record has a little bit of disco, a lot of soul, and loads of upbeat moments that are light on their feet. So it'll feel like a party.”
Welcome to Dead Club City. Membership is free but the perks are infinite. And don’t worry: your name is down and you are coming in.