Mirror Mirror, the latest single from New Cross punk-delicates The Violets, is a shard of brittle punk rock with the highly charged breathlessness of static lightning. All chopping/reverb-ing guitars spiked with hallucinogenic vocal darts, it has a fragmented, flailing energy which always seems on the verge of losing its coherence and disintegrating into irreversible chaos. It’s punk rock shattered then glued back together, leaving fine cracks snaking through the sound’s jagged edges.

This band have that rare knack of making a song sound genuinely dangerous and unstable: Mirror Mirror has the (melo)dramatic urgency of a car speeding through driving rain towards a cliff. The Violets mix tunes with energy, lace them with a ragged grandeur and spit them at the listener with a hungry desperation. They’re driven, compulsive and full of angry fatalism… and you should check them out. Because they’re exciting, because they’re different, because they might just thrill you. Or at least make you shiver.