Add to playlist: Panic Shack's gleeful anarchy and this week's best new tracks
Across seven years, cheekily raucous quartet Panic Shack have gone from the Cardiff underground to the fringes of the mainstream. After forming as a raised middle finger to snooty blokey indie bands 'fiddling with their pedals with a face like a slapped arse', their self-titled debut crashed into the Top 40 last month and topped the UK rock and metal albums chart.
With inspirations ranging from the Clash, Bikini Kill and Amy Winehouse to the Slits' guitarist Viv Albertine's autobiography, Panic Shack are a fizzy, riffy, irreverently hilarious bundle of buzzsaw guitars, vim and vinegar. Crucially, they sound like they are having a ton of fun, surely the point of starting a band in the first place. Onstage, they have comically exaggerated poses and even their own dance, which went viral on TikTok.
Girl Band Starter Pack – imagine Wet Leg's Chaise Longue on pint-can energy drinks – describes a typical night out with rowdy enthusiasm: 'I finish work, I text the girls / Let's get a bevvy, four double voddys … we get silly, we get loud!' Other songs cover the media obsession with body image (Gok Wan, which sarcastically asks 'If my stomach is flat and my arse is perky, maybe I could get everybody to like me'), sexual harassment (Smellarat) and their own friendship (Thelma and Louise). Latest single Pockets gleefully encapsulates their celebratory irreverence. It's about, but of course, the usefulness of a bag when wearing a dress with no pockets, in which to put 'Vape / phone / keys / lip gloss!' Dave Simpson
Big Thief – Grandmother (ft Laraaji)Their best song yet? The US folk-rockers see off fatalism with the power of love and rock'n'roll, their cosmic guest Laraaji adding wordless exultance. Truly life-affirming.
Creeper – Blood Magick (It's a Ritual)Imagine Ghost covering Heaven Is a Place on Earth and you're pretty much there with this gigantically silly new single from the UK goth troupe, recounting sexy Satanic shenanigans.
Casey Dienel – Your Girl's UpstairsFormerly goth-popper White Hinterland, Dienel has amassed a crack band for their return, with Hand Habits' Meg Duffy bringing rough-grade guitar to a breezy alt-rock song about restless desire.
Sophia Stel – All My Friends Are ModelsShoegaze meets synthpop in a kind of lo-fi slacker version of Maggie Rogers' widescreen earnestness, complete with a gorgeous chorus of pure yearning poignancy.
Anysia Kym & Tony Seltzer – SpeedrunTwo open-minded NYC producers surfing around the outskirts of rap join forces, with Kym – whose albums Truest and Soliloquy we love – adding a vocal earworm to this junglist miniature.
Algernon Cadwallader – HawkThe name suggests an Edwardian steampunk detective but it's actually a midwest emo band, back with their first album in 14 years. The first single is a triumph, looking back on a late friend with fondness and pain.
Reuben Aziz – City GirlsThe British rap/R&B vocalist is puppy-loved-up, swooning over his one-in-a-million girl with the kind of gentle melody and tenderness that Drake reaches for when he's in seduction mode.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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