From Brighton
Recommended if you like Osees, Ty Segall, the noisier bits of King Gizzard
Up next Currently working on a debut album for release next year.
A city with its own psych festival, and indeed a gig promotion company called Acid Box, Brighton has no shortage of lysergic left-field rock bands. But while most of their local contemporaries tend to the more recumbent end of the psychedelic spectrum, Oral Habit deal in what they call “the ear-rattling psychic dream of choked-up acid punks”, a sound that feels overpowering, explosive and intense: you could say it’s more closely aligned to the disoriented racket of mid-60s freakbeat than the pie-eyed beatitudes of the Summer of Love; equally you could suggest it’s a very contemporary form of psychedelia, rebooted for the troubled, disturbing climate of 2025.
Initially a home recording project of frontman Charlie Hales now expanded into a trio with the addition of his brother Felix on drums, and his partner Tippi Lewis on bass, Oral Habit’s recent EP Garage Frock! offers four short, sharp bursts that expand on the sound of its predecessor, Cardiovascular Spectacular, throwing up an impressively bloody and chaotic melange of guitar fuzz, echo-drenched vocals, feedback-drenched solos and primitive riffs that feels as if it was recorded with everything turned up to full volume, including the mellotron that decorates I’m Free. Even the one track that initially presents as a ballad, The Coast, eventually gives way to a crushing, sludgy grind. As statements of intent go, it’s impressively full-on, as is Charlie’s explanation of the band’s sonic philosophy: “if a button’s there, it’s there to be pushed.” Alexis Petridis
This week’s best new tracks
Bill Callahan. Photograph: Alexa Viscius
Bill Callahan – The Man I’m Supposed to Be
After being on a beatific kick for a while, Callahan rediscovers and turns his savage side against himself: “I don’t want to be the man that I am any more,” he rues – though the track still ends with a giddy “hee-hee!” LS
Robyn – Dopamine
More neon-hued than 2018’s reflective Honey, Robyn’s return hides complexities about the chemistry of attraction, desperation and fatalism amid its Moroder-meets-Daft Punk euphoria. AP
Ms Banks – 4C
The title refers to the British MC’s class of Afro hair, which she embraces in all its unruliness – and as she raps her formidably paced bars, it becomes symbolic of her broader unwillingness to be hemmed in. BBT
Mandy, Indiana – Magazine
Valentine Caulfield’s “primal, screaming call for retribution” after being raped is a whirring, thrashing cataclysm – with a disarming minimal techno breather partway through before being subsumed by diabolical noise. LS
Poppy – Bruised Sky
Her chorus melody could easily be done as chiming dream-pop or even folk, but it’s actually floating across a landscape of jagged, compressed metalcore – which she then lands on with a demon-banishing roar. BBT
Bleech 9:3 – Jacky
The Irish rockers’ debut single Ceiling was a joyous squall and the other side of the 7-inch is just as good: there’s shades of Wunderhorse to the spirited chorus, dodging through a jostling crowd of guitars. BBT
Tony Bontana – Battered Chips
Recently heard on Nourished By Time’s wonky-pop classic The Passionate Ones, the Birmingham rapper breezes through this throbbing lo-fi beat, celebrating life in the moment under a cloud of weed smoke. BBT
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