The single opens on a guitar line so lean it feels rationed, all sinew and no fat, the kind of riff that sounds like it's been sharpened rather than written. Kilby's vocal arrives close-miked and conspiratorial, a half-whispered confession rather than a declaration, and it's this proximity that does the real damage. He sings like a man telling you a secret he knows he shouldn't, and the production wisely never lets the intimacy curdle into cliché — the reverb stays tight, the mix stays dry where a lesser record would have drowned everything in atmosphere.

What separates this from the current glut of studied post-punk revivalism is the groove sitting underneath it. Where most bands working this seam settle for angularity as an end in itself, Kilby and his rhythm section keep finding the pocket, letting the bass loosen the song's shoulders even as the guitars stay clenched. It's a neat trick: control and abandon running on parallel tracks, which happens to be exactly the song's subject matter. Submission and command, concealment and confession — the lyric sheet keeps circling suburban facades and the wildness humming underneath them, and the arrangement mirrors that duality rather than merely describing it. Form following filth, you might say, and getting away with it.

The chorus, when it lands, doesn't explode so much as exhale. The distorted guitars widen out, the vocal drops its whisper for something closer to a purr with teeth, and for perhaps twenty bars the song allows itself the pop hookiness that Kilby has clearly absorbed from years of watching audiences from a stage rather than a rehearsal room. This is a songwriter who understands spectacle without needing to shout about it — the drama comes from restraint held just long enough to make the payoff mean something.

Following on from a debut in Dreamlove Obscura that earned its cult following the honest way, through songs strange enough to reward repeat listens, "Shivers and Echoes" suggests Banquet Darling has found a sharper, more physical version of that same restless imagination. It's a single that trusts its own tension, confident enough to let a groove do the seducing while the lyrics do the confessing. As a taster for the forthcoming album 'NOW', it's a genuinely exciting signal: a songwriter who has learned that the most unsettling thing you can do to a listener is make them feel complicit. Turn it up, keep the curtains open, and let the neighbours wonder.