Album Review
Tulpa
Monster Of The Week
Vinyl/CD/digital
Release date: 28 November 2025
(4.5 / 5)
One of the most exciting new bands in the UK – but with the cool reserve of quietly heroic past-masters. Tulpa are so good they could be mistaken for Americans says Ged Babey. ‘Midway between The Sunday and Pixies’ is the tag-line.
– What is a Tulpa? – It’s a mythical being manifested into existence through the act of concentrated thought, like an imaginary friend brought to life, but (sometimes) scarier…
This is a band for the new generation. Teenagers and twenty-somethings who are looking for the new, exciting and original in guitar-based music.
A band that sound so cool, write songs that are so strange, but look so unexpectedly normal and ordinary that you wouldn’t give them a second glance in the street.
The songs are about pyromaniacs, spies, monsters, tulpas, stick-figure boys, UFO’s, reveries, phantoms and psyops.
Not just boy-meet-girl then.
This is a band who live in their imagination. Record their day-dreams and write about their nightmares.
The singer/bass-player Josie Kirk will be dubbed ‘the Mona Lisa of New Indie’ and Dan Hyndman who provides the male vocal on a couple songs is the definition of laconic as a singer. Both he and Myles Kirk alternate in playing lead and rhythm guitar which meshes beautifully, underpinned by drummer Mike Ainsley who always seems dressed for bad weather.
Tulpa are so cool, you really would think that they are American….
(STOP! Whaat?) (Looking back at the history of Music Journalism 1977-2000 – the music press/business ALWAYS found it easier and preferable to mythologize and eulogise bands from the USA rather than the UK…. Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, Arcade Fire… rather than UK bands. Maybe it was to do with ‘market forces’ but so many British bands never achieved their potential worldwide and its always been a bugbear of mine that American bands always used to get preferential coverage.
These things don’t matter to me generally but Tulpa have huge commercial potential, being as they are ‘midway between the Sunday and Pixies’ or Lush and Pavement… They have a kinda ordinariness and a mystique that could well translate into mainstream success without vulgar commerciality.
The Skep Wax label (Rob & Amelia) seem to specialize in bands who are essentially the spiritual children of the bands they formed themselves as youngsters, Talulah Gosh & Heavenly. So in tandem with reissues of their old material, they are releasing brand new, box-fresh, jangle-pop, naive C86-style indie, thus flooding the market with their signature sound. A style of music and associated look, that was much-mocked by the laddish music press at the time.
But Tulpa are that and so much more besides. But as always, it’s down to the quality of the Songs!
Every song on Monster of The Week is perfect in isolation… but fit together as a immaculate collection
They open with an instrumental, ‘Theme‘. (Like Pixies did on Bossanova)
Transfixed Gaze next, condenses the Sundays and The Wedding Present formulae into one perfect 3 minutes 11 seconds of cynical, cyclical pop… the narrative of which has an echo of Devoto (to me, but must be sheer coincidence…) – and goes a little something like this…
Psyops has a chorus/hookline that goes…. you’re so sad and I don’t know why – repeated like a mantra until it becomes hypnotic.
Pyro is super-fast -the Primitives meets Josef K.
Let’s Make a Tulpa – will be, in time, looked back upon as an utter classic. Perfection.
Six songs in and they switch vocalist. Monster of The Week is laidback and groovy slacker-pop personified with a hint of The Monochrome Set. You feel like everyone’s against ya is a killer opening line which pale-boys and sad-girls will immediately relate to.
Stick Figure Boy is so perfect, lazy, corny and too long – like a twee parody of Dinosaur Jnr – but still irresistible.
You’re Living in a Reverie has a hint of the purity-of-sound of Ceremony, and the lyric is astounding in that it seems to use vocabulary drawn from Ian Curtis (permanence) Howard Devoto (reverie), Morrissey (ill at ease), Buzzcocks (inside my head there is harmony) and again, Pixies (Let’s take a ride on a UFO baby..). None of which I’m suggesting is deliberate, but it will hook in older listeners…
It’s Amateur Hour. I need professional help – is just such a great couplet, sung sweetly with an almost imperceptible hint of menace.
Raw Nerve is all frenzied guitars, and may remind seasoned listeners of the spiky excitement of Josef K say the label.
Whose Side Are You On? is the eternal question and a great song sung by Dan to close the album on a slacker note, sounding as it does like Blur in their Pavement phase.
Skep Wax say: A whole set of loud, catchy, perfectly-crafted pop songs have been conjured into existence – and want to be part of your life. Josie’s hyper-melodic lead vocals are cool and crystalline – but the lyrics are warm and human. The twin guitars create a sonic mesh, a web of textures that traps you, whether you like it or not. And yes, something scarier does lie below the surface. Occasionally the guitars force their way to the front, furious and intense. And sometimes those lyrics aren’t as innocent as they first appear. The danger, just below the surface of the songs, is maybe that’s what makes this album so arresting…
I started off saying ‘This is a band for the new generation’ – and in the course of writing about them have referenced twenty other artists – including Leonardo Da Vinci from the past. Which is kind of odd, because Tulpa really do sound like Tulpa and have a real character about them, and as a debut album, it really is superb.
If you are my age, you will remember the first time you heard Dry, Three Imaginary Boys or Surfer Rosa…. classic debuts from bands that were out on their own – from the very start – and how they ‘blew you away’ and tilted the world on its axis…. yeah OK, calm down.
Tulpa don’t need hype and hyperbole. They are the real deal and sooner or later, the (secret) public will get what they want…. and it won’t need to be manifested into existence through the act of concentrated thought. Because it’s already here. The coolest, genuinely Indie-pendant Band in the UK: (My) Tulpa.
TOUR DATES
29 Nov 2025: Leeds, Wharf Chambers
30 Nov 2025: London, The Lexington
All words Ged Babey with press release content in italics
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