Nathan Bryce, Panic Is The Norm | Track Review 🎵

[otw_shortcode_dropcap label=”T” size=”large” border_color_class=”otw-no-border-color” shadow=”shadow” square=”square”]hat title could go on a fridge magnet in my house and nobody would question it. “Panic Is the Norm” is the new single from Nathan Bryce and Loaded Dice, out now everywhere, and it’s the most honest song name I’ve come across in months.

Candace Crockett wrote the words, and she wrote them from inside a life most people would struggle to joke about. She’s a widowed mother, and the lyric comes from those stretches where the bills, the school run and the broken boiler all arrive in the same week. What I love is that she refuses to make it a tragedy. The tone is closer to a friend telling you about her disastrous Tuesday over a beer, rolling her eyes, getting the biggest laugh at her own expense. Nathan said the song came from being honest about how life actually feels, and that honesty is the reason it works. Nobody’s posing.

The band throw everything at it. Big guitars, a rhythm section that never lets the tempo drop, and a groove lifted straight out of the years when Allman Brothers records and Chicago blues were sharing shelf space. Yet the mix sounds like it was made last week, not dug out of a crate.

Then Clayton Doley, flown in on keys from Australia, decides the song needs more rock and roll and simply supplies it. His playing borrows Jerry Lee Lewis’s whole attitude, all flourish and nerve, and he gets the last word on half the phrases in the track. I didn’t expect a piano to be the loudest personality on a guitar band’s single, but here we are.

Loaded Dice made their name on stage, and this feels like the moment in a set where the drinks get put down so people can move. Give it one spin while you’re running late for something; it fits.

You can take a listen to ‘Panic Is The Norm‘ by Nathan Bryce and Loaded Dice here. 

Four out of five – George James. 

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