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Live Reviews Music

Yungblud combines spectacle and intimacy

Inclusion is important to Yungblud. His songs, which touch on everything from gender identity and prescription pharmaceuticals to mental health and family dysfunction, preach self-acceptance and resisting society’s pressures to conform. His fanbase, the Black Hearts Club, is built on what’s described as a shared sense of unconditional love and communal support.

His live shows are about connecting with everyone in the venue. Early in tonight’s sold-out Wembley Arena show, he urges we treat everyone with respect. Later, while introducing Anarchist, he declares: “Never be afraid to be yourself. If people don’t like you for it, they’ve got no fucking imagination. You’re fucking brilliant just the way you are. “People still misunderstand me. They’ll never fucking get it. But it doesn’t matter because we’ve got each other.” 

Categories
Live Reviews Music

Working Men’s Club are fiercely independent and uncompromising

The lazy comparisons with New Order are inevitable. Their sound (post-punk guitars and attitude meet dance rhythms, electronica, and early ’80s synthpop) isn’t dissimilar. Their roots (the North) are shared. Even their make-up (three men, one woman) is the same.

But Working Men’s Club, who arrived with debut single Bad Blood in early 2019, are no nostalgic knock-offs. Clearly fiercely independent and uncompromising, they ditch convention. That’s certainly the case at a sold-out Electric Brixton on the final night of a national headlining tour.