Oral Habit: A Broken Chord
(Kraupop! Records)
LP | DL
Brighton-based psych-garage trio Oral Habit arrive with their debut album, A Broken Chord, already carrying a growing reputation for intensity and unpredictability. Released via Falmouth’s Krautpop! Records, and ahead of a full UK tour, the record captures a band who have honed their craft and, while still building on everything they’ve achieved so far, are unafraid to experiment and push the boundaries of their sound.
Reinforced by a recording process that leans heavily on live takes and the imperfections that come with them, the album packs heavy, unyielding sounds: amps pushing hard, tape saturating, instruments bleeding into one another. These processes give the record a murky depth and, importantly, a striking sense of momentum and purpose.
The album opens with its title track, A Broken Chord, a dark yet playful introduction that immediately establishes the band’s character. A pulsing, subterranean synth creates a bubbling backdrop for a boxy, tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of the term “broken chord”, punctuated by sporadic crashes of noise that hint at the band’s intense, fuzz-drenched sound. From there, Surface Breaker kicks the album into gear. Influenced by fast-paced 1960s psychedelia, the track fizzes with energy, driven by choppy rhythmic shifts, a commanding central guitar riff, and barked vocals. Just as it finds its footing, it unexpectedly veers into a rapid instrumental passage, capturing the band’s experimental spirit and willingness to follow ideas wherever they lead.
Faux Fidelity brings a high-tempo blend of the band’s garage-rock foundations, math-rock-leaning riffs, and high-octane psychedelic production. Relentlessly intense, gritty, and joyously messy, the track captures the band’s eagerness for big, fuzzy riffs, intercut with vocals that sit deep within the wall of sound. It serves up sharp rhythmic changes from section to section, an approach that has become a defining feature of the band’s writing.
Elsewhere, The Glove takes a more conventional melodic approach. Brilliantly constructed, thick and gritty guitar licks dance around the driving drums before the track reaches an anthemic, strikingly radio-ready vocal melody. The song beautifully balances the band’s noisy psychedelic-garage core with melodic accessibility, making it one of the album’s highlights.
Album focus track Chekhov features a brilliant, pleasingly long and euphoric guitar solo that captures the essence of the 70s-influenced guitar work found throughout the record, while Thin Trippin’ brings together more melody-driven songwriting with the sprawling psychedelia that the trio do so well.
Towards the end of the album, Do the Dog leans into a more angsty, punk-flavoured soundscape, as boxy electronic drums fight against big distorted guitars. Album closer Crooner & Moon ends the record on a stripped-back, dystopian note that ultimately helps give the album a sense of grandeur and identity, lending it the feel of a concept album thanks to its shape-shifting sonics and rich, experimental songwriting.
Across its runtime, the album draws from a wide palette of influences: 60s freakbeat, Krautrock repetition, punk immediacy, and psychedelic sprawl. Rather than treating these as fixed reference points, Oral Habit collide them in real time, often within the same track, shifting tempo and structure with little warning. The effect is beautifully disorientating, freeing, and unyielding. What emerges across these individual moments is a record that feels deliberately uneven in texture but unified in intent.
Vocalist Charlie Hales explained: “I see ‘A Broken Chord’ as a spectrum of all of the parts from Oral Habit, from the live band recordings to the weirdo psych studio trickery. Some tracks we’ve played almost every night. This live sound just gets beat into us, and then we try and get a tight live take for the record. There’s deeper cuts, attempting to ng to replicate a demo I made in the past and then trying to figure out what the fuck it is… so yeah, it’s an accumulation of fragments of ‘oral habit’.”
A Broken Chord is abrasive, unrefined, and often past the point of excess, and that is entirely to its credit. The album doesn’t aim for clarity or comfort; it leans into overload, distortion, and instability as core aesthetic principles. It’s a free, playful, and improvisational debut that captures a band excitedly unafraid to push themselves and do something genuinely different.
UK LIVE DATES
25 JUN // Cardiff, Fuel
26 JUN // Bristol, The Old England
27 JUN // Birmingham, Sunflower Lounge
28 JUN // Oxford, Truck Store
29 JUN // Sheffield, Sidney & Matilda
30 JUN // Gateshead, The Central Bar
6 JUL // London, Shacklewell Arms (Supporting O.R.B.)
7 JUL // Brighton, The Hope & Ruin (Supporting O.R.B.)
18 JUL // Edinburgh, Cowgate Block Party
TICKETS
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All words by Simon Lucas-Hughes. More writing by Simon Lucas-Hughes can be found at his author’s archive.
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