Kerry, Amos, and Kate have built their reputation on marrying playful wit with genuine venom, and 'Tamoo Trance' represents perhaps their most successful balancing act to date. The track tackles the hypnotic pull of online shopping with the kind of righteous anger that recalls the best of riot grrrl, filtered through a distinctly British lens of sardonic humour. When Kerry snarls "don't go on / don't get sucked in cause 80% of what you buy goes directly in the bin," she's not just making a point about waste—she's articulating the peculiar 21st-century horror of watching yourself make poor decisions in real-time, powerless against the dopamine drip-feed of endless scrolling.
The fictitious "Tamoo" shop becomes a perfect metaphor for the attention economy writ large. Kerry's observation that it should come with a gambling warning isn't hyperbole—these platforms are designed with the same psychological manipulation techniques that keep punters feeding coins into fruit machines. The Baby Seals understand this implicitly, and they're furious about it. That fury translates into some of the heaviest, fuzz-laden riffage they've committed to tape, all raw edges and deliberate ugliness. This is garage-punk that actually sounds like it was recorded in a garage, in the best possible way.
The press materials suggest a darker energy than previous outings, and they're not wrong. Following their debut album *Chaos* and a tour supporting new wave legends Bow Wow Wow, The Baby Seals seem to have emerged with something to prove. 'Tamoo Trance' trades some of the cartoonish exuberance of earlier work for a more sustained, menacing groove. The guitars don't just thrash—they circle and stalk, building tension before erupting into gloriously messy release.
Yet for all its darkness, the track never loses that essential Baby Seals quality: the sense that making this music is, above all else, a righteous good time. They're rallying against consumer capitalism, yes, but they're doing it with the kind of joy that makes you want to join in. This is protest music that understands the power of catharsis, of screaming back at the void and laughing while you do it.
The decision to release 'Tamoo Trance' as a limited run of 250 7-inch singles feels entirely appropriate. The format suits the song's garage-punk aesthetic perfectly, and it's a delicious irony that a track about resisting consumer temptation will likely have collectors scrambling to secure a copy. The Baby Seals, one suspects, are well aware of this contradiction and are probably having a good laugh about it.
Comparisons to L7 and The Darts are inevitable and not unwarranted, but The Baby Seals have carved out their own identity over nearly a decade of making noise. They occupy a space that's distinctly British—too snarky for straight-ahead American punk, too angry for indie-pop, too political for nostalgia. 'Tamoo Trance' finds them honing that identity to a fine point.
The track arrives as the first in a run of new releases, with 'I Will Panic If I Want To Shirley' following in December. If 'Tamoo Trance' is any indication of the form The Baby Seals are in, we should all be paying very close attention indeed. This is a band that's figured out how to make urgent, vital music about the present moment without sacrificing any of the visceral thrill that makes garage-punk worth listening to. Angry, funny, and gloriously uncompromising—exactly what we need right now.