“We Don’t Give A F*ck!” Clash Meets Panic Shack

Panic Shack are having a pretty extraordinary year. They’ve played countless festivals, including a coveted Glasto slot, lit up SXSW, been enlisted for supporting duties by the likes of Metronomy and Bob Vylan and amassed a huge following with a string of sell out dates across the country and further afield in the process. 

Formed in 2018 by vocalist Sarah Harvey, guitarists Meg Fretwell and Romi Lawrence and bassist Emily Smith, with drummer Nick Doherty-Williams joining in late 2022, the group have firmly established themselves as a noisy, punk-infused presence with a keen sense of fun to boot. 

Extraordinary isn’t always positive, of course. Last year saw the group unwittingly draw the ire of TikTok trolls when a clip of their BBC Introducing performance of ‘The Ick’ went viral. Bolstered by a wave of support from existing fans and newcomers alike, the group duly drowned out the naysayers and Panic Shack have shown no signs of slowing down since.

Paul Weedon caught up with Sarah, Meg and Emily in Cardiff to reflect on the Panic Shack experience to date, what it was like to tackle the trolls head on and their ambitious plans for the future.

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Weirdly, I understand that you guys came together courtesy of Lush, the cosmetics chain, right?

Meg: Yeah, I moved to Cardiff about eight years ago. I first met Emily at Greenman festival in 2015 before I lived in Cardiff. Then I moved and needed a job and Sarah trained me at Lush, so that’s where we met. The day I got the job was Greenman the year after, and Sarah happened to be on my campsite. We bumped into each other and I was like, “I’ve just started working at Lush”.

Sarah: I was like, “You’re gonna see some sights this weekend”.

Emily: I think me and Romy were there as well. None of us hung out or knew each other that well. We were all big gig-goers. We had partners that were in bands and used to go to all the big gigs in Cardiff. And then we just thought we could do it. 

Sarah: It started out as a bit of a joke in my head… It just seemed so far from something that could actually happen. Like it would kind of be a little bit of fun for us to talk about while we were on shift. We just enjoyed thinking about it. That’s how it was for me in my head at first. But Emily was in a band already and I think you probably just wanted to get a band of your own up and running.

Emily: It was proper up in the air until after Green Man 2018 and then we sent the message going, “Let’s fucking do it”.

Sarah: We met up before that and wrote a list of all the things we didn’t want to be. Our ‘anti-inspo’ list. We met up and had a meeting about what we wanted to be. It was quite funny of us to do that.

What was on the list of things you didn’t want to be?

Sarah: Serious. That was a big one. Black and white photos. Moody… And then we had the actual practice with acoustic guitars that I think we all found in an attic or something.

Meg: Our practice after that was kinda legit. We had to go to PMT in town and buy the first guitar I saw. The cheapest one. I still play it to this day. I had to go and buy it to practise. That was the start of it all.

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How does the writing process work for you guys?

Meg: We might have a collective idea together or like just one of us will have an idea. It’s a very collaborative effort. One of us will come up with a bit of something, whether it’s lyrics or a situation that’s happened to them and then we’ll spin off of that… Jiu Jitsu was the first song that we recorded and Emily and Romy had been to a Jiu Jitsu class in Rhondda… We actually wrote it on a work trip with Lush in Manchester. We went to a bar called Crazy Pedro’s and spent our expenses on cocktail jugs.

Emily: We were actually writing a different song on a paper plate and these guys kept coming over and pissing us off and trying to buy us drinks, but not in a nice way. We were just playing on the words. Then we got steaming and started singing and improvising. 

Sarah: We just thought it was really funny, you saying, “I’m gonna jiu jits-you”. That’s where it really started.

Humour plays a huge part in what you guys do. How important has it been to cultivate ‘the Panic Shack image’, as it were?

Meg: We had that before we had the songs – outfits, dance moves, everything like that. Our friendship and our inside jokes, all of that came before the songs. Social media plays a huge part in it because we just film ourselves doing stupid things.

Emily: Visually and stylistically, we always knew what we wanted to be and the music has kind of gone along with that.

Sarah: With the internet and social media, we wanted to be mates and let everyone in on it, so everyone else felt this connection to us as well. It can be so serious with other bands and you don’t get this little idea of their world. I think that’s sad.

Emily: Sometimes I think we might share too much.

Meg: Everyone overshares on the internet.

It’s tricky to talk about social media without acknowledging what happened on TikTok last year. The way you handled it was amazing. Your personality shone through, but it must have been quite galling.

Meg: It was, but I’m glad it happened.

Sarah: Me too. We can take on anything now, I think.

Meg: I genuinely do feel that way now, but it was just a shock to us at the time. We’d never dealt with any comments like that at all and we were just like…

Emily: “Are we shit?”

Meg: Yeah, we were like, “Has everyone been blowing smoke up our arse this whole time? Do we not have a fucking clue and do we sound like shit?”

Emily: I felt like our managers had just been pranking us and we’d been gaslit.

Sarah: It’s almost like an X Factor moment. It turned out we were The Cheeky Girls or Jedward – who I love, by the way.

Meg: I mean, even if we are the Jedwards of the world, I’m very happy with that, but yeah, that was tough… We all had our moments. I’m quite a sensitive person.

Sarah: Yeah, we all cried our eyes out. 

God, I’m really sorry.

Meg: Em was really resilient and kept coming back and just going harder… She could have easily gone with the wind and tried to ignore it, but that would have been pathetic.

Emily: But we had absolutely no reason to because they were just tearing us down with lies. We were like, “We’ve got the receipts”.

Sarah: That was the thing that got us the worst, wasn’t it? That everyone thought we were not working class.

Emily: It’s like, “We’re fucking poor actually.”

Sarah: It’s the sort of thing that we just never expected anyone to say about us.

People were throwing the “Tory” insult at you. It’s weird that that’s the angle they took.

Sarah: I know. And it’s the worst one they could possibly say… We quickly understood that people in the comments section don’t know shit. They’re commenting to try to get likes.

Emily: It’s a fine line because you’d reply and they’d be like, “Oh my God. Why are you guys upset?”

Meg: The point is they’re just provoking no matter what.

Emily: I miss them now.

Sarah: Yeah, we’re trying to get them back.

Meg: They come back every now and then.

Sarah: We did get some really nice support from Wet Leg commenting on our video, because they get the same kind of stuff. The Crawlers reached out.

Meg: And we had a crazy amount of new people come along. Like, as much as people came along to comment on it, a lot of people ended up listening to our stuff. It was great in the end.

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How would you guys characterise what you do? I’ve heard you say you don’t consider yourselves a punk band.

Sarah: We’ve got punk energy. It doesn’t necessarily sound punk. We write pop songs, but with a punk energy. It’s tough, isn’t it?

Emily: It’s kinda like you are the guys that tell us what we are, right? We just write the music that we want to write.

You’re right. It’s an easy catch-all for journalists, but no one making music is ever really thinking about that.

Sarah: When people ask, I will say “punk” just because it’s the easiest thing to say.

Emily: It’s poppy and punky, but not pop punk. We always have to try to explain it.

Meg: I think our ethos and the way that we act kind of is, in a way.

Emily: We definitely have the mentality of a bunch of punks. We don’t give a fuck.

Sarah: I guess the subject matter of the songs could be classed as punk as well, in terms of sticking it to men. 

Metronomy enlisted you to cover ‘It’s Good To Be Back’ earlier this year. That song is about as far removed as you can get from Panic Shack, so that must have been fun.

Meg: Their management approached us. They were asking newer bands to recreate the whole album. I had no idea why they chose us, but we were very grateful for it… They said, “Make it sound like you.”

Emily: We just went wild with it.

Meg: I’m glad people enjoyed it. I was worried it was almost too different at points. And we ended up supporting them in January this year. They’re so sweet.

Sarah: And it’s so crazy. We all listened to Metronomy. We all listened to indie music in the 00s and the 2010s.

Emily: If I could have told myself I’d be doing this when I went to school, I’d have shit my pants.

Sarah: They’re so awesome and so lovely. They actually said to us that our version is better than theirs, which is quite funny.

Emily: They’re blowing smoke up our arse.

Meg: It’s really funny to play a gig and hear people shout, “Play the Metronomy song”. It’s very much like, we went to the studio and did that there. We’re gonna leave that to the professionals.

Sarah: And we just cover Gay Bar now instead.

Have you heard from other bands about doing something similar?

Sarah: Kind of. I don’t think we can talk about it, but it should be really exciting.

Meg: It’s a more similar vibe.

It must be tricky being in a position where you want to talk about this stuff but can’t.

Meg: I’m so nervous that I’ll let something slip. People come up to us after our gigs and they’re like, “Oh, you’re like Bob Vylan”. And we’re like, “Oh, well we might be doing some shows with them”. And then you remember it wasn’t released at that point and you go home and you’re like, “Fuck. I can’t believe I told someone that.”

The likelihood of someone saying anything is…

Meg: Yeah, who’s going to listen to some random geezer? But I still went to bed that night thinking, “What have I done?” And then, luckily for me, two days later we announced the tour.

Emily: But when a fan is asking you something, you want to tell them.

Meg: Still, I actually need to keep my mouth shut. 

Sarah: Thing is, it’s not often that we have things that are top secret. Not really. This one just hasn’t happened yet, so we’re more dubious to say.

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Tell me a bit about recording. I understand you’ve recorded with SCALPING’s sound engineer, Alfie Brown. How long have you been working with him for?

Sarah: Yeah, he’s in Katy J Pearson’s band. He does SCALPING. He produces. He’s a man of many talents. 

Emily: He’s been doing our demos, but previously we worked with Tom [Rees] from Buzzard on all our other songs. We love working with Tom, but it’s nice to see what our songs sound like working with other people. That’s been exciting. 

Meg: We’re trying out a few different producers at the moment, basically. We’re going to be writing and recording an album. Recording isn’t underway yet, but we’re recording a few different tracks to see what they sound like. They’re kind of like demo tracks that we can move forward with.

It’s mad how much of an impact that outside perspective can have.

Emily: They bring fresh ideas and we’re learning as well. It’s fun.

Meg: We record our own Garage Band demos as well.

Emily: Oh, they’re shit. They’re so funny. We had this meeting with a producer the other day who produces all the people that we love and we were on Zoom to him and he was like, “Send me all your demos!” And we’re were like, “Fucking hell. Absolutely no way.”

What’s the set up when you do that?

Emily: Normally we’ll sit on my roof, put a blanket down, drink some beers, do about five minutes of Garage Band and get pissed in the flat. Maybe feed the pigeons on the roof. It’s a funny process. We’re trying to knuckle down.

Sarah: Yeah, we’re trying to knuckle down, but the sun isn’t helping. We just want to be out in it. But hey, we’re here, we’ve got band practice after this. We’ll just keep working on new bits and get some songs down in between working and gigging and all that.

Also, you know you’ve made it when your EP is going for silly money on Discogs, right?

Meg: It’s insane. I think someone has bought it for £80. It says the highest price was £80.

Also, I love that you’ve looked that up.

Meg: Oh yeah, of course. But yeah, we have people who message us that are like, “Your record’s going for £100 on eBay. Why?”

Emily: We’re like, “That’s not us selling it.”

So that was a limited pressing. I take it you worked with the label to get that out?

Meg: Yeah, Brace Yourself. They’re a PR company first and foremost, but they started the label. We were their first signing, so this was the first EP they put out on the label, but they sorted all the production and distribution of that.

It’s kind of the dream scenario, coming up with people like that. You grow together.

Sarah: We really like that. With anyone we’ve ever been around, we’re all starting on the same rung of the ladder together. It feels nice. Especially with this kind of business. It’s tough.

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Words: Paul Weedon // @Twotafkap

Panic Shack play Y Not, Deer Shed and Kendall Calling this weekend, with more European dates to follow. They will support Bob Vylan this November.