PUNCHBAG arrive like a intimidatingly sharp switchblade wrapped in ribbons and tissue paper – dangerous, unexpected, and utterly unconcerned with fitting in with anyone’s preconceptions. The sibling duo of Clara and Anders Bach slice through the thick fog of modern irony while maintaining the playful spirit of those who know precisely when to take things seriously – and, more importantly, when not to.
Their self-proclaimed “aggressive hopecore” emerges from the most unlikely of recording studios (a literal wardrobe), where discarded clothes and a temperamental microphone stand bear witness to the birth of something new. It’s here, between the hangers and hemlines, that PUNCHBAG have been developing a sound that perfectly captures the paradox of modern existence.
Their start is a story of siblings who’ve “known each other for a while,” they deadpan, finding their collective voice in the forced intimacy of global crisis. “It was really only because of Covid that we started working together sort of by accident,” Clara explains. “I wanted to produce-up some songs I had, and Anders gave it a go, never having produced anything before, and then we just did that for years until it sounded okay.”
That modest origin belies the confident swagger of their debut EP ‘I’m Not Your Punchbag’, arriving via Mute Records this spring. But before PUNCHBAG emerged, both siblings had already carved their own distinct musical paths. “Anders has been in a very loud post-rock band called Butch Kassidy, where he played the lapsteel and his laptop,” Clara notes, while she maintained her own separate project. You might say it was only a matter of time before their creative paths met.
In PUNCHBAG’s world, the roles are clear but fluid, a creative process that is thoroughly collaborative. “We both write and produce everything together,” they explain. This partnership has yielded more than just music; it’s become a lens through which to examine the peculiarities of the world around them.
Their evolution into PUNCHBAG is almost a reaction to making art in an age of endless scrolling and context collapse. “We like to describe it as ‘Aggressive Hopecore’, which feels relevant to right now. It’s about 2025,” Clara reflects. “We live in an irony epidemic, and everything is meme-able, but alongside that, things in the world are pretty serious, and peoples’ heads are in complex places. We worry about that.”
This tension between digital absurdity and genuine human emotion runs through everything PUNCHBAG create. “We think those two things can be connected, that contrast, and it sonically sounds like that too, the softness and also the toughness,” Clara continues. “This music isn’t about chasing the news, we are chasing what people’s thoughts and emotions are because of what is going on and being able to do that also with joy and catharsis.”
The resulting EP emerged from sessions split between Berlin, Whitstable and their London home base, working alongside collaborators Michelle Leonard and Dee Adam. “We recorded everything at home together, just sitting in front of a laptop for weeks, going a tad mad until it was finished,” they reveal. “The main challenges are just trying to get the mic stands to fit in Clara’s wardrobe where we record all the vocals.”
That DIY spirit pervades the four-track collection, which they describe as “a nice big soup of subjects spanning from the tumultuous relationship you have with your phone to someone making a snide comment to you at the dinner table.” Each song captures a specific moment in PUNCHBAG’s evolution: “‘I’m Not Your Punchbag’ was the song that helped us work out our name. ‘You Used To Be So Sexy’ was the first ever session we did. ‘Pretty Youth’ was one of the first songs we made that felt like this is PUNCHBAG.”
“We had no rules, and we hope you can hear that”
The EP functions as what they call “a phone camera peering into 21st-century life for a day,” capturing the raw energy of their initial experimentation. “I think that rawness and freshness came from literally just messing around, having fun and shouting with no filter,” they explain. “We had no rules, and we hope you can hear that.”
The tracklisting was assembled with characteristic directness. “We wanted to be straight to the point, like BANG, here ya go, here is a lil crash course into PUNCHBAG,” they explain. “We want each song to feel like they could stand alone strongly and they are all intense in different ways. It was very important that each song you could move or jump to, obviously.”
This emphasis on physical release through movement feels particularly vital in our increasingly screen-mediated world. As Clara notes, “Joy is important and jumping up and down in a sweaty room is important but I think you can do that in a non-escapist way too, without the floweriness, the petals. Although we do wear a lot of pink on stage.”
Their approach to personal development mirrors their musical evolution – equal parts determination and playful absurdity. Currently, they’re “working on our mind, body and soul,” with Clara quite specifically “working on being able to do the splits again.” This physical preparation accompanies their ongoing musical development, having “just came back from Berlin and wrote a bunch of new songs, keeping it exciting, keeping pushing our music and most importantly getting our live set to be spectacular, pyros pending.”
Looking ahead, PUNCHBAG’s ambitions range from the practical to the playfully absurd. When asked where they’d like the EP to take them, they respond with deadpan humour: “To the darts championship.” More immediately, their 2025 calendar is filling up with promise: “Ooooof, a lot of fun things including some festivals, our first ever headline, and just more music for people to jump to or laugh to or cry to?”
Perhaps that’s the greatest promise in PUNCHBAG’s wardrobe-recorded missives: turning the everyday tumult of the present moment into something raw, urgent, and oddly uplifting. And if they can keep doing it with no rules, so much the better.
PUNCHBAG’s EP ‘I’m Not Your Punchbag’ is out 2nd May.
Leave a Reply