There's a version of this story where Pushbike are just another scrappy guitar trio making noise in a mid-sized UK city. That version is missing the point. The Little Bastard EP — four songs, well under ten minutes — is the kind of record that doesn't ask whether you like it. It asks whether you're going to do something. George Gravell, Niall Ivie, and Tom Grogan are embedded in a specific, functioning ecosystem: Exeter's Cavern venue, the Spinning Sister label they help run, a network of zines and interlocking bands that includes the powerpop outfit Bramwell and Ivie's tape-hiss project Maeries. This is not backdrop. The EP sounds like a scene mid-formation — which is exactly the point. The musical wiring is explicit. The abrasive tension of mid-80s Washington DC post-hardcore (Rites of Spring, Fugazi's immediate antecedents) runs through the structures. Boyracer's gleeful twee racket provides the melodic permission. The Promise Ring — midwest emo at its most hook-driven — is audible in how Pushbike insist on the chorus even when the guitars are fighting it. These aren't incidental influences. They're the argument. On Pure Hate, those streams collide best: the song builds from fuzz-pop clarity toward what the review accurately calls a 'throat-stripping display of emotion,' the kind of emotional escalation that only works if the first two minutes earn it. I Am the Pilot runs on mile-a-minute drums and barely-controlled momentum. Rainham Steel does the loud-quiet-loud thing without irony, which takes nerve in 2025. All four songs are structured like invitations — hooks open enough that you can imagine playing them yourself. That's the EP's real achievement. It isn't trying to be the final word on anything. It's trying to make you want to start something. In a landscape where 'indie' increasingly means algorithmic optimization and playlist placement, four songs recorded with the urgency of someone who just found out the venue closes in six months is its own kind of radical act. Pushbike understand what scenes are for.
