Coach Party open Caramel with a wall of teeth-rattling crunchy noise and hooks so sugary you could stir them into your tea and feel wired all day. This record is a loud and glorious racket with ruthless pop instincts, sitting proudly in the lineage of British alternative post-grunge bands like Elastica, Garbage and Ash.

Caramel feels like the definitive August Bank Holiday album. You can almost smell the sunblock and stale lager with maximum noise, maximum bounce, and no subtlety whatsoever. Do It For Love is basically Van Halen’s Jump with fizzy keyboards, huge smiles, and a charming message to do the things you love because you love them. Girls! is a mosh-pit starter pistol, just pure vocal commands from the girls with Guy Page’s glorious tumbling drum rolls collapsing into tight, crisp beats to give the verses the feel of a fuse about to detonate. The chorus ‘Where the fuck are my girls?’ is no less direct than a Spice Girls chant, but with ten tons of fuzz.

On track three Georgina, Jess Eastwood’s voice cuts through the noise with tenderness after two opening tracks of euphoric chaos. It’s still loud, summery, and built on crunchy fuzz but the mood has tilted. They don’t soften the sound to get there, and even rip through a frantic solo through the verse that feels like racing thoughts, but the chorus is tinged with a restless ache. I Really Like You is a crush song so simple that it feels totally emotionally universal, and then Disco Dream flips the mood with a celebration of dancing alone written as the perfect soundtrack for exactly that. Fake It slows things down with a big wistful swing about forcing a smile until you’re alone again. Everything sounds summery and bright, but the chords often ache as the lyrics sag with sadness.

The whole album has the feel of formative crushes, nights out, and self-doubt bottled and immortalised. Every track sounds like a single and slams, and the fuzzy electronic studio experimentation just serves to make Coach Party’s poppy attitude loud enough to shake the festival’s tent poles.

Reviving a very British tradition of noisy, hook-drunk indie rock, this is a band that isn’t afraid to be earnest, messy, catchy, and huge all at once. The UK used to churn out albums like this in the 90s, and in 2025 it feels like a breath of warm, fresh air, fizzing with electricity. You can hear the smiles in the vocal delivery and little sparks of chemistry in the harmonies with each member throwing their own hooks in at just at the right moment. It’s bouncy, instantly radio-ready, and effortless to understand. Every song is a direct snapshot of a crush or a night out or a confident mood wrapped in a gorgeous clash of dirty fuzz and gleaming pop sweetness. You’ll remember the hooks after one listen, with little studio details everywhere and real time taken to shape these songs into anthems that are both immediate and meticulous.