'Lunga' is the sound of a door opening onto a pasture, fog rolling over grass as the sun rises in the distance; it is the sound of renewal, and a sense of optimism. These are glistering melodic songs, an antidote to the chaos and abrasive atmosphere of touring, and a beautiful side-step from the music that Sydney Minsky Sargeant has been recording as Working Men’s Club for the past seven years. The 12 songs that mark Lunga were written over a period of years, beginning when Minsky Sargeant was a teenager growing up in Todmorden and following a chronology to the present day. It’s a deeply personal insight and Lunga feels like a haven, a world we can all step into.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: While I've dipped in and out of Sargeant’s work in Working Men’s Club and found much to enjoy, for me the languid folk-adjacent melodies and smoothly plucked acoustic guitar of ‘Lunga’ is a much more accurate barometer of his superbly evocative writing style and inventive melodic leanings. There are echoes of the thoughtful, downtrodden alt-folk of Alexander Tucker or Nick Drake, but it’s in the slower moments that Sergeant’s songwriting talents shine through, with brittle high-passed guitars and shimmering echo atop double-tracked vocals bringing incredibly welcome comparisons to ‘Madcap’-era Barrett. It's not all woozy drifting though, the more defined moments of melodic clarity shine as brightly as anything he's ever written. It’s a wonderfully rich, inventive sound that’s completely at odds with the industrial thump of WMC, and all the better for it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. For Your Hand
3. I Don’t Wanna
4. Lisboa
5. Long Roads
6. Summer Song
7. Chicken Wire
8. Hazel Eyes
9. Lunga (Interlude)
10. A Million Flowers
11. How It Once Was
12. New Day