Formal Sppeedwear combine accident and meticulousness on inspired debut ‘Punch Card’.

By Hard of Hearing on September 10, 2026

On their first full length, the trio are restlessly creative without ever being pretentious.

Words: Marty Hill | Photo: Jacob Swetmore

“You can never prejudge the value of mistakes and their role in your personal creativity. Plotting, planning for perfection is a valid strategy – allowing room for the unplanned is crucial.”

There can’t be many bands who have adhered to John Cale’s words as loyally as Stoke-on-Trent’s Formal Sppeedwear. The peculiar spelling of their name came from a typo that they eventually decided to run with, and that very much reflects the philosophy of their stunning debut album, ‘Punch Card’. Many of the songs here were born of happy accidents, compositional and production improvisation and late nights spent “smashing ideas together until they erode each other and fit more consistently”. This mechanical ideation period would then be followed by hours of meticulously arranging and fleshing out to form some of the most blindsidingly infectious songs you’ll hear all year.

The decision to put ’Who Needs Spain Ball’ forward as the lead single must have been one of the easier ones made around the album. Beck Clewlow’s twisted yelps punctuate spasmodic bursts of guitar and perforated walls of synth on probably the record’s brightest and hookiest moment; long-term live favourites ‘Hit ‘n’ Run’ and ‘Wait (Hatches Gets a New Hide)’ represent the other contenders here. That’s not to say that there’s anything lost when the band deviate from the wily pop tendencies of those songs, though. Late highlight ‘Appointment’ is an anxious marriage of krautrock motifs and otherworldly textures that willingly falls apart and recalibrates itself in a way that recalls label mates Shaking Hand, whilst closer ‘Friedrich Backs Up Nothing’ hums with the sound-manipulated cellos of experimentalist Lili Holland-Fricke. There’s as much to admire when Formal Sppeedwear contort their jittery new wave-isms into something immediate as there is when they keep things decidedly languid.

There’s a pretty eccentric list of influences that have been cited – Neu!, Yellow Magic Orchestra, This Heat, Bill Nelson – but it’s the homogeneity of those records that Sppeedwear are interested in replicating more than anything. As they put it: “If it sounds good and its component parts can’t be pulled out, we’ve matched the job description.” That’s a measure of success that they undoubtedly satisfy on the record. Nearly discarded parts of unfinished songs were collaged upon each other and dropped into new places right up until the mixing stage, with the band’s willingness to self-produce the album affording them a little extra room for spontaneity. Between the fits and starts of treated feedback, manipulated sound design and duelling leftfield guitars and synths, the band certainly land on the kind of “big sonic question mark” that they admire so much about their predecessors’ work. Such was their determination for everything to contribute to this, they even disregarded three songs from the album because they “fit too well” with the rest of it.

The real charm of ‘Punch Card’ is that it is restlessly creative without ever being pretentious. Sounds are maniacally pulled apart and then slowly stitched back together as the band ask each component part to justify its reinclusion. There are so many influences on the record that there are almost none. You can isolate a David Byrne-ish yelp here or a wiry, XTC-like guitar melody there, but the curiosity that the band all clearly share about leftfield ‘70s music means that their own record is so dense with ideas that it is never in danger of becoming anachronistic. Truly one of the best records of the year, and one of the best debuts in quite some time.