The Bobby Lees come from Woodstock, so you’d expect their sound to be all peace and love wouldn’t you? Prepare to be plelasantly surprised.

Hailing from the very same small town in upstate New York, their frantic garage-punk sound and attitude is less peace and love and more don’t fuck with me.

Singer Sam Quartin reminds me of Karen Finley, the controversial New York performance poet of the 1980s, not just with her vocal flow but in her take-no-shit attitude.

This song, Red Hot, is a furious tirade about addiction and painful desires, about yearning for attention, connection and love, with Quartin’s blazing guitar slashing through the furious rhythms of clown-faced drummer Macky Bowman and bassist Kendall Wind.

Formed in 2017 by a 23-year-old Quartin and the teenage Bowman and Wind, recruited from a music school in Woodstock, they’ve won fans including Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry, Henry Rollins and Jack Black.

Jon Spencer has regularly given them support slots with his band Boss Hog and produced their second album, Skin Suit, while Mike Patton of Faith No More signed them to his label for their third release, Bellevue – named after the mental hospital where Quartin was once a patient.

After a period in Nashville that produced the EP Hollywood Junkyard, they went on indefinite hiatus in 2023, burned out and unable to make ends meet in an ever-contracting music biz, but bounced back three years later with an incendiary version of PJ Harvey’s 50 Ft Queenie.

 It’s not for the faint-hearted.