Brighton Oral Dope and the Best New Songs of the Week | music

from Brighton
Recommended if you like Oasis, Ty Segal, The Noisiest Parts of King Gizzard
the next I’m currently working on a debut album that will be released next year.

A city with its own psych festival, and indeed a concert promotion company called Acid Box, Brighton has no shortage of lyrical rock bands. But while most of their local contemporaries lean toward the more staid end of the psychedelic spectrum, Oral Habit deal in what they call “the ear-pounding psycho-dream of suffocating acid punks,” a sound that sounds overpowering, explosive and intense: you could say it’s closer to the fuzzed-out club of mid-’60s punk than the euphoric beatitudes of the Summer of Love; Likewise, you could suggest it’s a very contemporary form of psychedelic, rebooted to suit the turbulent and unsettling climate of 2025.

Initially a home recording project from frontman Charlie Hales has now expanded into a trio with the addition of his brother Felix on drums, and partner Tibby Lewis on bass, Oral Habit’s latest EP Garage Frock! It offers four short, sharp bursts that expand on the sound of its predecessor, Cardiovascular Spectacular, resulting in an impressively bloody and chaotic mixture of guitar fuzz, reverb-drenched vocals, feedback-laden solos and primal percussion that sounds as if it was recorded with everything cranked up to full volume, including the mellotron that adorns I’m Free. Even the only track initially presented as a song, “The Coast,” eventually gives way to slurry thrash. As statements of intent go, it’s admirably complete, as is Charlie’s explanation of the band’s sonic philosophy: “If there’s a button, it’s there to be pushed.” Alexis Petridis

The best new songs of the week

Bill Callahan – The man I was meant to be
After being in a state of euphoria for a while, Callahan rediscovers his feral side and turns it against himself: “I don’t want to be the man I am anymore,” he laments — though the track still ends with a giddy “hee-hee!” L.S

Robin – dopamine
Robyn’s return is more neon than 2018’s reflective Honey, belying the complexities of an alchemy of attraction, desperation and fatalism amidst Moroder-meets-Daft Punk euphoria. AP

Mrs. Banks – 4C
The title refers to the British presenter’s genre of African poetry, which she embraces in all its wildness – and as she sings her massively rhythmic bars, it becomes a symbol of her wider unwillingness to be corralled. BPT

Mundy, Indiana – Magazine
Valentine Caulfield’s initial screaming “call for revenge” after she’s been raped is a droning, crushing disaster – with only a minimal disarming techno break halfway through before subsiding under demonic noise. L.S

Poppy – bruised sky
Its chorus melody could easily be performed as twangy pop or even folk music, but it actually floats across a landscape of compressed, sinewy metal cores – upon which it then lands with a demon-dispelling roar. BPT

Bleach 9:3 – Jackie
Irish rock band Ceiling’s debut single is a blissful whirlwind and the other side of the 7-inch is just as good: there are shades of Wunderhorse to the peppy chorus, dodging through a crowd of pounding guitars. BPT

Tony Pontana – Potato Chips
Most recently heard on the wonky pop classic The Passionate Ones from Nourished By Time, the Birmingham rapper blasts through this pulsing lo-fi beat, celebrating life in the moment under a cloud of weed smoke. BPT

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