Their new single is a mission statement, showing off a love for garage pop and punk forms without succumbing to mere tribute.

The New Eves have quickly established themselves as one of the most exciting new bands to break on to the scene. The Brighton band made a name for themselves in London at the Windmill’s inaugural Cello Sunday and the City hasn’t looked back since. Debut release ‘Mother’ featured on ‘Slow Dance ’22’, establishing the band’s twin loves for the primal chant-like punk of The Raincoats and more old-fashioned folk, garage and exotica references.

A new single released by Slow Dance in collaboration with Broadside Hacks Recordings packages this song alongside follow-up ‘Original Sin’. The latter feels like an origin story of sorts for the band, making for a brilliant standalone single. Taking a pluralistic approach to morality, it unpicks dichotomies of heroes and villains, centring on an accepting relationship to ‘sin’ appropriate for a band reinterpreting the Eve character. Realising “The sinners are sacred from a different point of view”, our speaker decides to “Throw away my fading halo and start dancing”. The sentiment is appropriate to a song that syntheses the liberated sounds of 70s punk and proto-punk and the garage singles that influenced those groups (the singalong backing vocals are point the song in the direction of the fantastic ‘Girls in the Garage’ compilation series).

Released in association with Broadside Hacks’ label, one naturally expects the song to lean into the band’s folk influences. What we get instead is a punk manifesto, delivered in knowing emulation of Television (a shredding violin/cello-led section being the most folksy this tune gets). Opening on a Marquee Moon two-chord riff and then daring to lead with the words “I remember…” shows the unabashed confidence of the band to live up to such a touchstone and distinguish their work from it. “Great artists steal”, as many great artists have put it. In their invocation of the roughness of the sound of the likes of Television and The Raincoats, and the poetic lyricism of Tom Verlaine and Patti Smith, the band show that there is far more timelessness to punk forms than ‘angular’ guitars and angsty shouting.

Leaning into the roughness of 60s garage production style, vocals sit enjoyably uncomfortably high in the mix of this track, adding to its knowingly kitsch tinniness. This also joyously brings out Nina Winder-Lind’s unique singing style as she takes the lead. She somehow leaves it unclear whether we should take her words entirely seriously. Certainly, the argument is convincing enough, but she also twists her words with a winking lilt as if to say, ‘None of this is really so important, right?’ The sentiment really hits home in the final strains of the song, as she yells, in a tone reminiscent of DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh, “Grab your apples… and make pie!” It is the kind of half-affirmation that pop music has always done so well, and which perfectly suits a modern detachment from any specific moral message.

‘Original Sin’ is an incitement to freedom on the most fun terms. ‘Mother’ felt like an extract from something not yet understood, a fragment lacking context, and that was central to its charm. ‘Original Sin’, on the other hand, is a complete picture, a whole and exciting opening statement.