Interview: Panic Shack
Panic Shack
Cardiff punk quartet Panic Shack comprised of Sarah Harvey (vocals), Meg Fretwell (guitar/backing vocals), Romi Lawrence (guitar/backing vocals), and Emily Smith (bass) are on course for world domination. Following their recent summer festival appearances and release of debut EP ‘Baby Shack’ Philip Giouras caught up with the group to discover more.
Taken from Issue IV - 2022
Anyone who has had the pleasure of witnessing Panic Shack live will not be surprised to discover speaking with the group over zoom is a joyous and chaotic experience. Speaking from their lounge our conversation is full of life and laughter.
A cat can be heard in the distance meowing intently to join in the call, then like something directly out of a sitcom, guitarist Romi Lawrence enters the room just as I’m being explained the definition of a ‘Cash Piggy’, and when bassist Emily Smith gets something caught in her throat, the others are quick to tease.
The bond between the group is undoubtedly strong. As much as they tease and interject, there’s a clear feeling of love and support for one another. Panic Shack came about after the four friends, felt ‘spurred on’ and ‘inspired’ by watching musicians at Green Man in 2018, thinking ‘let’s have a go’. ‘With absolutely no idea how we do that,’ singer Sarah Harvey tells me, alluding to the fact the group had no prior musical experience, learning their instruments as they’ve gone along, but as guitarist Meg Fretwell notes, it’s all ‘been part of the fun’.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more hard-working group of musicians in 2022 than Panic Shack. Avid cricket fans would have noticed them at this month’s The Hundred whilst they’ve supported the likes of fellow Cardiff rockers Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard. Panic Shack are set to play alongside Yard Act, a rock band hailing from Leeds on the up later this year. Panic Shack have performed their own headline dates across the UK alongside multiple festival sets. including 5 shows during Brightonbased event ‘The Great Escape’ which took place shortly before we sat down to chat. “It was, though it sounds dramatic, the best day of my life,” Meg tells me, with Em in firm agreement. “We were constantly riding high - show after show went amazingly well.”
The group may have entered your radar however during the BBC Radio 6 Music Festival takeover of Cardiff earlier this year. Due to Panic Shack already featuring on the BBC Introducing, a late dropout from Mercury nominated Gwenno due to COVID meant the punk quartet suddenly found themselves performing a prime time position on the Friday’s lineup alongside Orlando Weeks at the iconic Cardiff venue Y Plas. “We had to be like ‘…Sorry work, can’t come in, gotta play.’ They were actually really good about it.” details Sarah, quickly followed by Emily’s interjection. “If they said no, we just wouldn’t go in!”
When not making music the various members can be found in bakeries, pizza parlours, toy factories ( “She makes the toys, she makes them by hand!” jokes Sarah about Romi’s work), and in the case of Meg Fretwell, creating stunning illustrations. On Etsy as MegFretwell, she creates unique sets of music-themed tarot prints and cards.
As well as being Cardiff’s most exciting new punk exports, the group have also turned a hand to the occasional DJ set. Debuting their ‘Love Shack’ night following a headline show from labelmates Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, Sarah jokes they are “bookable for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs”.
So what is the staple sound for a Panic Shack DJ night? “We like to start out with the more indie, punky stuff so Amyl and the Sniffers and The Chats normally get people going,” Meg explains. That’s before they move into what they call “00s Dance bangers”. Moloko, Girls Aloud and ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’ by Madison Avenue. Sarah admits “Things go a bit west when we run out of tracks on our USB.”
Any bumps and learning curves come from the band’s proclivity towards saying yes to everything. “We do something before we actually can do it,” Emily and Sarah tell me with a laugh, but as proven to date, it’s an ethos that has served them more than well.
Earlier this year the group released their debut EP ‘Baby Shack’. We described it on release as ‘a reminder of why we all fall so deeply in love with music. The group convey exactly what makes punk so thrilling.’ As it transpires a lot of their music does originate from lived experiences. Take for instance, ‘Jiu Jits You’. A song warning catcallers and gropers with the aforementioned JuJitsu moves, this song came from a night when as a band at a bar, the group were consistently pestered by ‘guys who wouldn’t leave us alone’.
Despite the song’s threat of violence - warning anyone looking at their thighs without consent that they are “Gonna give you quite a surprise” - none of the group are trained black belts. Emily, who has taken two classes, informs me she could still put up a fight. “I’ve never been given a black belt but I reckon I could beat someone. You don’t need to be given a black belt to have a black belt”- something the rest of the group is in firm agreement with.
‘The Ick’ meanwhile relates to a particularly bad date Sarah went on in which she was shushed during a film. Due to a hotly contested debate online about whether the shushing was deserved, she is keen to put the story straight. She plays out the scenario, listing the evidence in her favour to me. “One - the film was shit. Two - it wasn’t loud - I was whispering in his ear like you do in a shit film. I was probably trying to get to grips with the plot of the film,” she says before emphasising with some bite the extreme level of shushing she endured. “He shushed me and I was like “Ok, it’s over between us” but people keep kicking off on Twitter about ‘Yeah I’d shush you in the cinema too!?”
An unreleased song that didn’t make the EP due to a sampling of Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’ is ‘Cash Piggy’. Having gone down a treat live, and simultaneously leaving me to define what exactly a Cash Piggy is to my mother-in-law, I posed the question to the group. “It’s somebody who wants to be financially dominated,” they tell me, giving an example of how it works. “Somebody reached out to us anonymously; it’s our first cash piggy… we just kind of dominate them.” Emily demonstrates in an authoritative tone “I can’t believe you sent me thirty pounds cash piggy, that’s disgusting! Where’s the rest?” They all laugh before Sarah adds “We message him ‘We’re thirsty’ when we’re at the bar and he delivers.”
There’ll be a few opportunities left to see the group perform over the remainder of the summer. None come bigger however than the group making their debut at the hallowed Reading Festival, the home of rock legends and where we’re sure the quartet will be one of the most talked about performances of the weekend. When we saw them grace Bedford’s Esquires we described their performance as “an exhilarating, breathless and impassioned set, making 30 minutes feel like five.” There are very few acts that manage to provide such a sharp reminder of why I love live music. For that reason alone, I can only recommend you catch Panic Shack now before their great tunes, talent and tendency to say yes to everything finds them headlining Cardiff’s Principality Stadium and beyond.
