Romantic, wonky, and awash with dream-state surrealism, Bohemian Clutter is a debut that feels like it’s been carefully torn out of someone’s notebook and then reassembled in a daze. London quintet pencil offer something refreshingly different from the jagged post-punk edges that have dominated the UK scene in recent years, instead leaning into warmth, fluidity, and beautifully tangled melodies.
Having built a quiet buzz from support slots with The Japanese House and festival spots across the UK and Europe, pencil already arrive with a tightness and quiet confidence. But Bohemian Clutter isn’t about polish, it’s about feel. Recorded mostly live with Polly Mackey (Art School Girlfriend) and mixed by Luciano Rossi (Mui Zyu), the EP invites you right into the room: creaky floorboards, fuzzy mic bleed, whispered vocals and all. It’s unfiltered and utterly transportive.
The opener, The Pencil, sets the tone with hushed vocals and poetic unease, something between a lucid dream and a private confession. Violinist Coco Inman’s swirling contributions are the EP’s not-so-secret weapon, lifting every track with a spectral edge that drifts somewhere between chamber pop and post-rock.
Sparkling Water is more grounded but no less evocative, its deceptively simple arrangement and lo-fi textures giving way to a song that feels like it’s dancing on the edge of consciousness. Pencil’s charm lies in their restraint: the rhythm section never overplays, vocals rarely force themselves forward, and guitar lines seem to flicker in and out of the mix like memories.
The centrepiece, Fantasy, is where their Hesse inspiration shines brightest, all blurred lines, soft dissonance and surrealist storytelling. It’s easy to picture this one holding a tent crowd silent on a hazy festival afternoon. Silent Corners and The Fork dive into hazier textures still, embracing the EP’s titular clutter, fragmented thoughts, loose ends, half-finished arguments turned into songs. There’s an intimacy here that recalls the likes of Big Thief and Sigur Rós, but pencil make it all their own through sheer instinct. These songs aren’t trying to be clever, they just are.
Closing track Honest Song is exactly what it says on the tin: raw, stripped-back, and yearning. It’s a gutsy closer that strips away the surrealism to leave something tender, confessional, and ultimately hopeful.
What pencil have created with Bohemian Clutter is more than a debut, it’s an opening of the diary. It’s subtle and soft-spoken, sure, but it rewards patience tenfold. The EP doesn’t shout for your attention, it lingers in the corners of your day, the kind of music that makes you pause whatever you’re doing and lean in, just a little closer.
It also does something that many debut projects don’t: it hints at a world that pencil are only just beginning to explore. Whether that means bigger arrangements, weirder textures or more conceptual depth remains to be seen , but for now, Bohemian Clutter is a beautiful first chapter.
Catch them live before they vanish back into the mist, pencil are building something special, and they’ve only just begun to sketch it out.
THE FRONT ROW 
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