On their second release, ‘EP2’, No Peeling sharpen an already volatile formula into something more elastic, more deliberate in its mischief, and paradoxically more controlled in its chaos. What began in Nottingham as a studio-bound experiment between five friends (Sophie Diver, Phil Booth, Nick Oakden, Dan Sheen, and Dom Durkin), now carries the muscle memory of a live band, and that shift is immediately audible. The songs still arrive in short bursts, but they no longer feel like fragments competing for space; instead, they behave like tightly coiled mechanisms, snapping open and shut with uncanny precision.
“Campaign for a Nice Time” sets the tone with a kind of cheerful abrasion, its bright surfaces disguising a meticulous internal logic. Guitars scrape and ricochet while synth lines dart in and out like competing narrators, never quite settling on a shared perspective. Sophie Diver’s vocal delivery threads through this activity with dry clarity, her phrasing cutting against the instrumental grain rather than riding it. The effect is disorienting in a productive way, as if the song is constantly rewriting its own rules mid-execution. “HGV Ted” accelerates the pulse without sacrificing detail. The rhythm section, locked in with an almost mechanical steadiness, acts as both anchor and engine, allowing the surrounding noise to veer into increasingly odd shapes. Here, the interplay between guitar and synth becomes more pronounced, less conversational than combative, each element trying to outpace the other while remaining tethered to the same underlying groove.
With “Night Idea,” the band briefly leans into something resembling atmosphere, though even this is handled with a sense of impatience. Any hint of mood is quickly undercut by abrupt turns and clipped transitions, as though the band is wary of lingering too long in one place. Diver’s observations land with particular sharpness here, her voice positioned not as a focal point but as another percussive element within the arrangement. “Mascot Fight” feels like the record’s most overtly physical moment, driven by a rhythmic insistence that borders on confrontational. The track’s structure is deceptively simple, but its execution is anything but; every beat seems to carry a slight variation, a subtle disruption that prevents it from settling into predictability. The band’s collective timing—honed through performance—keeps the piece from spinning apart.
“Stationery” pivots toward a more fragmented approach, its ideas arriving in quick succession without obvious connective tissue. Yet the coherence lies in the band’s shared sensibility: an instinct for when to cut, when to collide, when to leave something unresolved. It’s here that the DIY origins of the project feel most present, not as limitation but as an aesthetic choice, an embrace of immediacy over refinement. “After School” introduces a fleeting sense of narrative, its title hinting at routine while the music actively resists it. The groove is among the tightest on the record, providing a stable foundation for the surrounding disarray. Diver’s lyrics, as throughout ‘EP2’, draw from the banal and the absurd in equal measure, elevating everyday details into something slightly uncanny without overstating their significance.
Closing track “Crimes Against Buffet” distills the band’s approach into its most concentrated form. It is restless, playful, and faintly antagonistic, refusing to resolve even as it reaches its endpoint. The song collapses in on itself just as it seems poised to expand, leaving behind a sense of unfinished business that feels entirely intentional.
Across ‘EP2’, No Peeling operate as a true collective. The guitars and synths, handled by members whose identities blur into the project’s shared ethos, rarely function in isolation, instead forming a shifting surface over which the rhythm section exerts quiet authority. That foundation allows Diver’s voice to move freely, delivering observations that are at once detached and incisive. The result is a record that captures the immediacy of a band discovering its own momentum without losing the conceptual curiosity that defined its beginnings.
If the debut introduced a world of compressed ideas and rapid-fire execution, ‘EP2’ expands that world without diluting its intensity. It suggests a band not interested in smoothing out its rough edges, but in refining how those edges interact; how they cut, deflect, and occasionally align.
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