Post-punk quartet Paid By Cash release their debut single Sirens In The Sea today, a track that refines their scuzzy, jagged earlier material in four minutes plus more guitar ructions with even more of those visceral sparkles.

Live, the band’s sound is doubly captivating to soak up; accentuating their waves of flowing, shifting noises that echo Sonic Youth, Fontaines DC or fellow West Yorkshire art-rock singers The Lounge Society.

The band – guitarist/vocalist Ollie Carter, guitarist Harry Bolton and drummer Sam Green – played covers for several years before their former bassist left and current bassist Jimmi Brown joined, a massive wave of writing and concerts fueled by creativity soon ensuing.

The Leeds-based quartet shared their demo EP, Sounds From The Cellar, last year; a version in which the loose, sporadic sprawl is felt firmly even in short bursts like the two-minute Are you Anything? of Sonic Youth is molded to stunning effect. Unique half-sung, half-spoken vocals – somewhere, in a creatively juicy crevice between vocal independents of the spoken word and great figureheads of sprechgesang – steer the tracks like a steady, idiosyncratic rudder. These vocals clash with a satisfying friction between instrumentation mania, remaining unpredictably nonchalant and dark as guitars and drums thump and bass lines reverberate.

The band’s debut single is emblematic of their shift from the edgy post-punk experimentalism of early Cribs and Sonic Youth (although those influences are still deeply embedded in their DNA) and towards a crystalline Marquee Moon-era television style.

Sirens in the Sea revolves around a Verlaine-esque riff – pure mercury exuberance – and sinuous bass lines. This lead guitar is fused with ‘repeat, repeat, repeat’; a haunting Kafka of post-punk riffs, both brilliantly anxiety-inducing and heartbreaking, both gradually and cathartically encircling the same metallic notes in repetitive glory. Here, the lyrics are also crafted with similar Kafkaesque fervour.

Like Steve Shelley, drummer of Sonic Youth (the idols of the band from Leeds), Sam Green of Paid By Cash firmly anchors them in sufficiently frenzied rhythms and dynamic fills and octopuses elsewhere.

More than anything, Paid By Cash fills an essential void in today’s post-punk, shoegaze experimental arena, virtually unmatched in melody and their wanton destruction of song structures and norms; very similar to the raging pioneers from Wakefield and New York before them.

Listen to Sirens in the Sea below.

Paid By Cash play a single celebration gig on April 8 at the Santiago bar in Leeds. Tickets here.

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All the words of James Kilkenny, you can find the archives of his author here

picture by Sherman