The Pill’s debut EP is gloriously silly. A 13-minute sugar rush of British satire, giddy chaos, and blistering hooks. Across six tracks (most of which are already singles), they blitz through grooves and subjects in a fast, funny, and completely unserious way. If Lambrini Girls channel queer rage, The Pill are leaning into the ditzy, air headed blonde caricature and revelling it, leading with humour above anger. Opener POSH sets the tone at a careening pace, tearing through a send-up of rah-rah, Gap-Yah, cocaine-sniffing trust fund girls, Scaffolding Man is about making sure the attractive man working outside your window sees you naked after taking a shower, and Problem builds a brilliant call-and-response structure begging for a live crowd. Woman Driver revels in using your cleavage to get out of trouble, and Money Mullet delivers sound life advice (“never trust a man with a mullet”).

The EP is tight, sharp, and surprisingly varied for something so quick. It never drags, and you can hear flashes of The Vandals, but rooted in British references and social cues, jokes that won’t land outside these isles, and that’s the charm. The Pill are piss-taking, full of character and chaos, not built for moral messaging, but for the pure joy of being, rude, loud, and catchy. There’s a brilliant wave of loud, political and fierce Riot Grrrl recently and a lot of it sits neatly under the feminist punk umbrella, but THE EP doesn’t seem interested in making statements, or trying to dissect womanhood and reframe it. It’s just reveling in pure, unserious joy. Proudly silly, cartoonishly feminine, and full of the kind of energy that’s impossible to fake. It’s really, really fun, and while the playing isn’t flashy or complex, it’s tight and it slams just as hard as any anarcho punk band. They’re using the same raw, aggressive punk toolkit as their peers, but instead of coming at you with righteous fury, they’re coming at you with cheeky punchlines, sounding like they’ve each been handed one of those massive tubes of Smarties and downed it all at once.