Cold Pumas

For years Brighton three-piece Cold Pumas have traipsed up and down the UK, playing the same riffs over and over, and louder and louder – as if in search of some trance-like state of musical bliss. Their music uses that ecstatic repetition as a framework for singing drummer Patrick Fisher’s romantic angst, as the songs cycle through tension and release. Powerful rhythms, buzzy guitars and woozy amounts of reverb give way to melodies and yet more heartache, and it all results in a beautifully romantic and deeply English take on the minimal experimentalism of Cold Puma’s post-punk forebears that’s both emotionally wrought and very listenable.