‘A Working Class Lad’ is the first single to timely ooze from The Battery Farm’s forthcoming debut album FLIES. I say timely; it was the first song I listened to after hearing that Rishi Sunak had been sneaking money out of the budgets of deprived areas in the UK. We should all be PISSED. How pissed? Try matching the Manchester punk raconteurs of volition; there’s no one else on my radar that would make a better soundtrack for the overdue UK revolution.
Of all lyrical concepts, one that allows you to voyeur the conflict between identity, shame, confusion and class has to be one of the hardest to get right. There’s almost nothing more uncomfortable to me than the dissonance in celebrating the exploitation of our labour. Thankfully, The Battery Farm is about 100 IQ points above scribbling about working-class pride and becoming just another piece in the propagandist machine.
While the broiled and gnarled punk instrumentals and Ben Corry’s signature non-lexical rally cries bring the vexed energy, the simplicity of the lyrics triggers your oppressed contempt. I’m assuming everyone with a sense of sentience and a working-class status will have some; if not, I want the details of your lobotomist.
A Working Class Lad is out on all streaming platforms and a limited edition cassette on Rare Vitamin Records. The debut album FLIES is out on all platforms on Rare Vitamin Records on 18th November.
Review by Amelia Vandergast