And then there’s Artsick, who are so casually brilliant and who gives a fuck (come on, we’re all adults here), that they pull off that brilliant trick of making you care so much about their music by playing it so cool.

Artsick was formed in June 2018 when Christina Riley was feeling “artsick” and writing songs, but missing the inspiration and excitement of collaborating with her old band, Burnt Palms. Soon joined by members of Kids On A Crime Spree and Hard Left, Riley’s solo tunes turned into a fully fledged, scuzzy and fuzzy Punked Indie Pop hit to the central nervous system of anyone with ears. This is the kind of music that you could sit with your magnifying glass and pick apart (Dolly Mixture here, Vivian Girls, Television Personalities, Colleen Green upstartedness yadda yadda) but what sort of life is that? Riley’s music is a P-O-P dedication to all that is tough and mind-blowingly fun about being young, unsure and brilliant.

Some of these songs are so Off-The-Cuff they’re flailing un-buttoned in the wind, uncaring and free. The frayed Shop Assistants-charm is all over Artsick, like lead track Despise that is so effortlessly catchy with those 3 damn chords that we’re never gonna shake and why would we want to and those vocals that seem to drift away from the mic into the shambling mosh pit and that’s the way we like it it’s so sugary and excitable and also not caring that we’re wondering how long this sentence is going to last. It’s that good, so easy and honest.

Like we said, you could pick out the influences like some extremely poorly-laced 80s Doc Martens but you don’t have to. In a way this is not-thinking music, it’s slam it on the cans, on the turntable and just keep getting up and putting it on at the start. Sometimes the tumult in Riley’s lyrics might give you a little bit of that anxiety like, wow being young was stressful but was it ever this fun? We can’t remember so it’s good bands like Artsick can remind us.

Future classic!