Nothing But Thieves - ‘Welcome To The DCC’ Review: Glorious dance-rock for a new future
Our first look at the dystopian new world Nothing But Thieves has been building for the last 2 years. Taking Daft Punk, and injecting a hefty dollop of Muse, we arrive at their new single.
★★★★★★★★☆☆
Credit: Nothing But Thieves 📸
The boys from Southend-on-Sea are back with a free ticket to visit their futuristic and utopian universe, promising your ‘perfect life’.
Introducing Nothing But Thieves’ newest single, Welcome To The DCC. A glamorously optimistic dance-rock tune, infusing Daft Punk and Depeche Mode with Muse and Royal Blood.
As the first track of 11 on the upcoming album Dead Club City (July 2023), it’s the perfect introduction to a bright new direction (and future) for the band.
Promotions began for the single on the 10th of March, after the band restarted their Instagram feed. After only a few days of teasing, they really said ‘we’re back…now dance’.
Welcome To The DCC shares the blood of tracks like Amsterdam, Is Everybody Going Crazy and Number 13, emphasising the band dramatically expanding musically while retaining their core DNA. It picks up aesthetically from where the Moral Panic era left us.
While the dance-ready style isn’t surprising, from previous tracks tucked away (Live Like Animals), it’s satisfying to see the group bring it to the forefront. Now gorgeously blending a whole heap of dance into this new futuristic orbit, their catalogue is going to start looking more colourful than ever.
There’s speculation as to what the ‘DCC’ may be. All we know is it’s a city. Whereabouts is anybody’s guess. A utopian society where your dreams come true, or some kind of advertisement for capitalism?
Accompanying the song is an excellent music video, which is like something from Black Mirror or Severance. It’s trippy as f**k and it gives us an indication to where the band have been the last few years:
My favourite part of the track is how straightforward it sounds, but how well-produced it is in comparison. There’s such a dramatic build-up throughout as Connor softly screams about how the DCC can make everything better. His is voice is as smooth as butter at this point, and with the rest of the group grooving behind him, it’s an unstoppable single.
If we step out of the DCC for a moment and think about where Nothing But Thieves are right now in their career, we can understand the experimentation.
It’s been a while since scarily-relevant Moral Panic, which dropped conveniently as the COVID-19 pandemic consumed the world. Album no.3 saw them begin to conquer new ground, with politically-charged songwriting accompanied by an ‘end-of-the-world’ vibe reminiscent of FOAL’s double album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost.
It was the most creative we’ve seen them, but at times felt reserved and underwhelming – saved by the EP that followed (Moral Panic II).
Critically, the album was a turning point in their career – allowing them to start self-producing songs with the help of Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, The 1975, Twenty One Pilots).
It also gave them the opportunity to headline the O2 Arena for the first time. And those learnings have clearly stuck. If the rest of this album stacks up to the confidence in the lead single, it could be their best so far.
If Moral Panic saw them step into the spotlight, Dead Club City could see them own it.
Now, it’s your turn. Give it a spin, and tell us what you think on Insta or X.
Rating: 8/10
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