Spider Bags – Frozen Letter

Those bursts of skin-searing fuzz should do it: exhilarating heat courtesy of Dan McGee’s guitar, raising the temperature just enough to fry everything in its path. They're handily layered across mouth-watering slices of prime garage rock, perfectly balanced on the line between worldly stoicism and righteous snot – so North Carolina’s Spider Bags can find space for Walking Bubble’s ruminatory sad-guy strums amongst herky-jerky dance numbers like Japanese Vacation, and the rhythm remains unruptured. They’re not bad at this, you know.

The heads-down rumble of We Got Problems is the one moment where everything locks down to a furious caterwaul, as a guest solo from Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan wails away heroically; meanwhile, opener Back With You Again In The World builds from paint-peeling shuffles to a sax break that glows like The E Street Band drowning in toxic paint. “I’ll always be honest with you,” Dan intones through the chaos, and you believe him. [Will Fitzpatrick]