Back when they were Joy Division’s Factory Records label mates, ACR’s pioneering punk-funk barely troubled the charts, but it has subsequently influenced artists from Happy Mondays to LCD Soundsystem. Being rediscovered by successive younger generations has helped propel a career Indian summer: their recent music has channeled their early adventurousness and sounded contemporary enough to land on the 6 Music playlist.
Tunes are certainly pouring out of them. It All Comes Down to This is their 13th album and third this decade. Where last year’s 1982 made great use of Ellen Beth Abdi’s hazily soulful vocals, here they strip themselves back to the core trio of Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson and bring in Fontaines DC/Wet Leg producer Dan Carey to marshal the songwriting and delicate balance between melody and grooves.
If it’s hard to avoid a certain deja vu in the urban Manchester feel or Johnson’s signature drum fills, there are more bubbling electronics this time and the songs span a spectrum from introspection to euphoria. Kerr’s self-doubt drives the title track while Estate Kings hinges on Moscrop’s jazzy trumpet and Johnson’s narrated snapshots of a 70s Manchester childhood. Out from Under knowingly references 1980 club hit Shack Up and is probably the most wonderfully jubilant tune they’ve recorded since: the summery chorus of “Groove with the rhythm, it’s always giving” could be their manifesto.