PUNCHBAG - I Am Obsessed

One can’t help but assume the people who make up PUNCHBAG - sibling duo Clara and Anders Bach - never do anything by halves. This second EP, ‘I Am Obsessed’ is essentially a constantly overstimulated stream of consciousness that begins with a fully fist-in-the-air paean to disorganisation, ‘What’s In My Bag’, which comes complete with choral backing vocals and the kind of church bells usually reserved for Christmas Number 1 fishing attempts, and finishes with a swirl of repetitive gang vocals.

Theirs is a kind of no-fucks-given cut-and-paste pop. ‘Playing God’ goes full ‘80s film soundtrack in style, its chorus akin to a power ballad’s hyping-up bridge; ‘I Love This!’ pulls equally from ‘90s happy hardcore hits and ‘Mr Brightside’; and ‘Pile Of Clothes’ - arguably the short collection’s most potent point - uses ‘80s style synths echoing both Robyn’s legacy and that of erstwhile self-styled hit factory, Stock, Aitken and Waterman to be eerily familiar from the off.

It’s a lot, yes, and almost constantly sounds as if it may fall too far into either sincerity or novelty at any given moment, but by skirting that line while dipping into decades of different pop sounds on a whim, PUNCHBAG have here made something excitable, and therefore exciting.