7/10

There's a deliberate looseness running through 'Back of My Mind'. Fantastic Shams’ new album doesn't chase precision so much as presence, capturing the sound of four musicians reacting to one another in real time and allowing the occasional rushed note, tempo shift or unexpected flourish to remain part of the finished picture.

Across eleven tracks, David Bower, Cyrus Resur, Adam Gross and Matt Lynch retain the garage-punk urgency at the centre of their sound, but broaden it through R&B grooves, glam-rock hooks, dub textures and flashes of power-pop. The result feels less rigid than a conventional punk record and more interested in how far that foundation can be stretched without losing its physical impact.

Much of the album’s character comes from the way it was recorded. Working at Jefferson Street Music Studio in Bloomington, the band tracked the core performances live to tape over a long weekend, using a mixture of their own analogue gear and the studio’s equipment. That process inevitably placed more pressure on the performances, but it also preserved the kind of small irregularities that digital editing often removes.

Standout ‘Bianchi Celeste’ is one of the clearest examples of that aesthetic. R&B-informed movement rubs against glam melody and proto-punk abrasion, resulting in a track that remains danceable even as its structure changes direction. It's the kind of song that demonstrates the band’s evolution without abandoning the roughness that made the earlier material effective.

There are echoes of Wire in the economy and angularity of some sections, while the influence of the Velvet Underground can be felt in the willingness to let repetition, noise and atmosphere become structural tools. Yet 'Back of My Mind' is not overly reverential as Fantastic Shams seem more interested in understanding what made those records feel alive than in reproducing their surface details.

Lyrically, the album occupies similarly unsettled ground. Personal struggles are often filtered through narrative, allowing paranoia, dread and uncertainty to appear without overwhelming the songs themselves. The band describes the record as moving between optimism and unease, and that tension is reflected in the music, as moments of melodic warmth frequently sit beside harsher guitar tones or nervous rhythmic turns.

Here, Fantastic Shams have made a record that feels noticeably more expansive than a straightforward garage-punk exercise. Its greatest strength lies in retaining the sense of four people making decisions together in the moment.

The amps may be vintage and the tape deliberately old-fashioned, but 'Back of My Mind' is most convincing when it sounds like a band discovering new possibilities at full volume.