SO.CO Team
Live: Panic Shack @ The Brudenell Social Club
Brudenell Social Club
Part pre-Christmas blow-out, part 2024 festival-launch, the Festive Chill Party hosted by Deershed Festival at the legendary Brudenell Social Club in Leeds was a fantastic way to get the festivities started. Topping the bill (which also featured Warm Digits and the Brett Domino Trio) were Panic Shack, a band I’ve no qualms with describing as the best live act in the UK right now.
If you’ve yet to experience Panic Shack, try imagining The Slits going toe to toe with The B52s, at a party round Joe Strummer’s gaff. But with a whole lot more sass. Opening with the infectious Tit School (“I didn’t go to Brit School, I went to Tit School, I didn’t get straight As, but I’ve got double-Ds”) the massed ranks of The Brudenell are left in no doubt as to what we’re in for tonight.
The set is littered with the type of keenly realised punk gems for which Panic Shack have become known. The Ick, with its litany of reasons you can go off someone (putting the milk in the tea first is one that will go down well around these parts), and I Don’t Want To Hold Your Baby both hit home, but in truth the set doesn’t let up from start to finish.
By the time Who’s Got My Lighter rolls around, The Brude is bouncing. The all-too-short nine song set ends in riotous demands for an encore which unfortunately fails to materialise. It’s a perfect showcase of a band who, most likely, will be everyone’s new favourite band very soon.
Words and photos: Thomas Jackson