Formal’s Got a New Tingle...Formal Sppeedwear – Punch Card Album Review
Words: Ollie Hopewell
CREDIT: Jacob Swetmore
It’s here, and it’s fantastic.
After what feels like a lifetime of anticipation, the wait for a Formal Sppeedwear debut album is finally over, and it has arrived with more style, aplomb, and purpose than anyone could’ve hoped for. Teased around halfway into 2025 with the release of Wait (Hatchet Gets A New Hide), and later again in the October of 2025 with album opener Hit ‘n’ Run, Punch Card is an amalgamation of all that Formal are and a celebration of where they’ve come from, so please forgive me for not viewing this an emerging band’s first crack at the big time, but as years of dedication and hard work to deliver the exact sound that the trio have been building towards since their formation.
The first real taste of Punch Card came from 2024 single Bunto, but you can certainly make the case for their Dynamite EP as being the initial sign of the band’s brilliance to come; the aforementioned Hit ‘n’ Run has this quintessentially Sppeedwear sound to it, a kind of Krautrock-stained and wiry tune smeared with vocal stylings à la David Byrne – it just has this indescribable positivity and joy attached to it that makes you move your body in ways that even you weren’t expecting.
It's an incredible way to open the album, so naturally rolling into your lead single would seem too much like putting all your eggs into one basket and making your record too top heavy. Well, it would be for anyone else, but the placement of Who Needs Spain Ball? is the show of confidence that we knew we’d get from Formal Sppeedwear. It’s the track that caught the attention of one Hideo Kojima, small world, and it serves as the perfect continuation to keep your shoulders rolling and your hips swinging courtesy of guitarist Charlie Ball’s technical brilliance, though we definitely get into a more technically curious area as we progress through the album.
Incident is a play off of an Industrial sound that intersects into something New Wave or Art Rock adjacent, with angular riffs pinging off in varying directions to keep you excited in anticipation of what could possibly come next. What comes next is Knutmo 1-5, a slowing of tempo and welcome reprise from the depth on noises on offer; but the lull is swiftly abandoned as soon as Aardvark x2 picks up, and we’re back to ridged dancing to ridged music. The disjointed lyrics of frontman Beck Clewlow fade from bark-ish to resolute in delivery, stamping an authority and air of possession to the track.
The off kilter percussive work of Connor Wells plays very well across the entire record, but it really shines through during album mid-point A Concise History, a song that resumes the surge of Super Duper sounds that wrap round you like a thicket of tangled wires.
Fleas is possibly the weakest track on the album, but I feel that it’s placement between two heavy hitters makes it feel weaker than it actually is. That being said, Wait (Hatchet Gets A New Hide) really does hit hard, and when the punch lands it’s a knockout blow. Opening to a soundscape reminiscent of something you’d find in James Leyland Kirby’s Everywhere at the End of Time, we’re swiftly pulled back in by the bouncing licks of guitar that punch into your head. There’s a renewed brightness and funk in this record, and it feels like Formal perfectly thread the needle of complex technicality and focused quality throughout the entirety of the track’s runtime. If you had to push me for a comparison I’d say it’s a little XTC, but in reality it’s utterly and ridiculously Formal Sppeedwear.
The Ballad Of DCB is the trio’s love-letter to Stoke and the art of bookworming, quite literally telling the epic folk tale of the nearly tragic Drop City Books of Piccadilly in Hanley, a community-focused bookshop that has survived and endured more than most ever could. The focus on storytelling certainly isn’t ironic or unintentional here, and it makes the song stand out against the rest of Punch Card without being conspicuous. The Ballad Of DCB plays well against the textured backdrop of the following New Brother, a track that eases us back into waters of chirpy synth and fragmented keys before penultimate tune Appointment sweeps us away in a tsunami of liquid groove as we near the end of the Punch Card’s B-Side.
But Friedrich Backs Up Nothing doesn’t deliver the explosion of sound we’re expecting, and the all-mighty blast doesn’t come. We don’t go out with a bang, but with a Stephen Morris-esque shimmer. It’s an Atmosphere with which I’m unfamiliar within the established opus of Sppeedwear, and it feels totally new; an uncharted vulnerability that Formal haven’t previously tapped in to, accentuated by the performance of cellist Lili Holland-Fricke which really pulls you into the album’s finale. It’s an open wound, a helplessness, a realisation that you weren’t expecting to come to. It’s painful, and it’s beautiful.
Formal Sppeedwear have taken the scope and possibilities that come with self-producing an album and exceeded all expectation, giving themselves ample space for spontaneous creation whilst in the studio while retaining a tight focus and vision. The mastery of the album was handled by Paul D. Miller, affectionately known as Slug Bug, and mastery really does feel like the right term upon your first, and subsequent, listens.
Punch Card is an album so dense and diverse in concepts that you have no idea what’s coming next across your first few listens, and by the time you feel like you’ve gained a sense of familiarity with the piece you notice something else in each and every track.
It's an ode to the complexity of Formal Sppeedwear, a humble celebration of their unmatched ability, and a supreme gift to all those who have been there along the way of their journey here.
The electric itch that seeps across the entire record is thoroughly scratched, and the dopamine hit from each time the needle hits that one groove is, itself, electrifying. The repeated motifs could dampen the album and make tracks feel indistinguishable from the last, but they don’t. Formal get it, and they get it right; it helps that they’ve a shared musical pedantry that makes aiming for perfection the bassline rather than the end goal.
