Stream: Broken Baby, ‘Manic Panic’

Kevin Bronson on August 3rd, 2020

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“I don’t always wanna fight / But I might / Rather just be heard / Than try to be polite,” Amber Bollinger sings in Broken Baby’s new single “Manic Panic,” a punchy dance-punk song with a scratch-that-itch riff and an attitude to match. Apply liberally to the protest of your choice.

Though written before the current wave of social unrest, “it was always a protest song,” Bollinger says. “Music these days has to do more than make you move, you know? It has to raise the alarm bell. This is a song about doing just that.”

It’s the fourth single that Broken Baby — Bollinger and guitarist-producer Alex Dezen, along with bassist Adam Popick and drummer Brian Griffin — has released since their self-titled debut album in 2018. (For further doses of sonic prescience, there’s the punk rager “My Head’s a Television.”)

The new single comes with a fans-all-here video, edited by Andrew Bentler, for which Broken Baby supporters submitted their own clips as they rocked the song in quarantine. Speaking of quarantine, Broken Baby has been doing some “Live-Ish From Quarantine” sessions. Not quite the electric energy of the quartet live, but, hey, we’re in a pandemic.

||| Stream: “Manic Panic”