Formal Sppeedwear - Punch Card

Swinging out of Stoke-On-Trent like they’ve lit a trunk full of funk-fuelled avant-pop ablaze, this fun-baiting trio blend jangly guitars with off-kilter lyricism and a unique sense for melody that’ll catch even the keenest ear by surprise.

Formal Sppeedwear may look and sound something like pop, but Punch Card emerges through collision, constraint, and chance. Much like the typo in their name, now proudly worn by the band as a badge of honour, the result is an album of happy accidents that truly embody their audiences’ visceral, knee-jerk reactions.

For Fans Of: Devo / XTC / Talking Heads / The Sick Man Of Europe / Warmduscher / La Sécurité / Beck

After signing with melodic in 2023, the trio’s now sold out 2024 debut EP - a self-titled, self-produced 12” sample of elastic bass arrangements, leaping guitar motifs and sparse, un-assuming percussive work - picked up notable fans at BBC 6 Music and helped to secure shows around the country with the likes of Fat Dog, Preoccupations, Warmduscher and Divorce. A legion of listeners grew, barraging Instagram DMs curious to unearth the mystery behind their idiosyncratic, off-kilter lyrics – usually a product of Beck’s phonetically-associated wordplay.

Prolific in their output, the band diligently produced Punch Card themselves with mastering from Paul D. Millar (Slug Bug). Led by a preference for sonic variety, they even discarded three tracks not belonging on the record; not because they didn’t fit - but because they did. Through their boomerang voice notes and a sense of telepathy that only college friends bonded by Neu! and Yellow Magic Orchestra could possess, they explain; “There’s definitely a subconscious level to what we do but it’s always driven by what works sonically. The real challenge becomes how to recreate it live.”

Blame those tracks which formed quickly when raw ideas and lyrics flowed from jam sessions in their Tremolo rehearsal room. Jagged, punchy ‘Indecent’ was largely improvised by the trio as a single recorded live take, and ‘The Ballad of DCB’ (avid bookworms in Stoke may have an inkling as to the meaning behind its acronym) was wrangled from a spritely brink of uncertainty after twilight tinkering powered a plethora of jangling guitar lines. Live staple ‘Wait (Hatchet Gets a New Hide) serves as collage of ideas and melodies harking back to the early days of Sppeedwear, completed on a Tascam 488 cassette recorder.

But, between joyfully jarring twists and turns, it is a rare moment of wistfulness which offers the biggest hint to the album’s wider Punch Card themes. A turning point in the recording process, finale ‘Friedrich Backs Up Nothing’ shimmers with strange atmospheres and sound-manipulated cellos; lyrically considering how history might react to the world today.

Formal Sppeedwear may look and sound something like pop, but Punch Card emerges through collision, constraint, and chance - much like the stamped out geometry that inspired its artwork.