Prince Daddy & the Hyena: Hotwire Trip Switch review – wildly entertaining pop-punk nostalgia from a vocalist reborn

On their fourth full-length album, Prince Daddy & the Hyena go back to basics with 12 pop punk would-be singles and no time for filler. Kory Gregory’s emo vocals hit new melodic heights on handily their most entertaining record yet.

I’ve come to realise that almost all of my friendships – or at least the ones that last – are built on music. Often albums are my first point of connection with a new person, their contents a deceptively meaningful and personal reflection of that friend’s particular outlook on life. I pride myself in having hardcore punk friends, indie folk friends, contemporary jazz friends, avant garde hip hop friends. The intimate, wordless communication involved in playing music as a band has formed the foundation of some of my most enduring relationships, whilst other times a particularly exhilarating gig (Confidence Man and Florence + the Machine come to mind) has served as a sort of friendship inauguration.

Prince Daddy and the Hyena’s performance with Oso Oso at Leeds’ Key Club in 2019 was one such inauguration. I spent most of the gig giving my friend Ewan leg-ups onto the reaching hands of fellow concertgoers, then filming them as they were launched indiscriminately from one side of the room to the other, beaming smile never fading. When subsequent act Oso Oso reached their climax in reindeer games, I realised Prince Daddy frontman Kory Gregory was bouncing up and down beside me, beer bottle in hand. This was a man who had soundtracked our adolescence with his abrasive songs about petty grudges, self-destructive tendencies and ultimately being “too caught up in confidence to feel confident”. To us, he was a bona fide celebrity. At home later that night, I proudly presented to my mum the spot on my Mom Jeans t-shirt where Gregory’s beer sloshed onto it, leaving a faint stain.

Ewan and I have matured in the intervening years, and so has the band. 2019’s Comic Thrill Seekers was thrillingly ambitious, but its overwrought tripartite structure and supposed links to The Wizard of Oz suggested one too many hits of the bong during the initial planning stages. The self-titled follow-up was more focused and featured some spectacular moments (the adrenaline-pumping second half of Keep Up That Talk, Hollow As You Figured’s monstrous hair-metal guitar solo), but the attempts at heart-tugging rock ballads felt saccharine, Gregory’s trademark scream revealed to be a crutch that had masked otherwise weak vocals.

But times are changing, and in the four years since that album Gregory has evidently been hard at work. He is now a vocalist transformed, nailing the Green Day-esque emo belt he’s long been reaching for, churning out one lung-bustingly anthemic chorus after another. His growl remains a fearsome weapon in his arsenal for when he needs it, but more often on Hotwire Trip Switch he’s belting out crystal clear high notes. He’s agile and precise on route-one belter 24-03-04_Birthday_B4, sure-footed on WTEN’s gallivanting chorus, and obviously indebted to Billie Joe Armstrong on SHITSHOW or Boulevard of Soaking Dreams, albeit with the aid of some judicious autotune.

What’s more, these are the sort of hook-forward pop-rock tracks that make the most of Gregory’s newfound vocal abilities. Gone are the big band diversions of Cosmic Thrill Seekers or the overlong instrumental diversions of the self-titled, in favour of a good old-fashioned three chorus set up, and even a rather showbiz key change on Big-Box Store Heart. The band struts through the nut-tight Sure Could with Paramore-esque vim, whilst standout 30days30days30days pairs a knotty interlocking verse with a wonderfully uncomplicated chorus earworm. It all fits neatly into the current trend for 2000s rock nostalgia present in mainstream pop ranging from Olivia Rodrigo to the revitalised Strokes and Linkin Park, but Cameron Handford’s detailed guitar work and Gregory’s witty lyricism elevates this album beyond mere cash-grabbing pastiche. On 30days for example, he winningly turns his lyrical focus away from his own drug addictions and towards more meaningful social commentary – in this case modern society’s desperate obsession with a “30 day cleanse”.

More often, though, Hotwire Trip Switch offers up the simple pleasures us Prince Daddy fans have been pining for since the band’s grungy DIY debut record. It’s an all killer no filler 34-minute espresso shot of an album, culminating with the terrifically entertaining two-minute romp Pinch Me, which features a batty 8-bit synth hook that could have been pulled from the latest Toby Fox boss battle soundtrack. On Something’s Gotta Give Gregory considers binning off the perilous business of being an almost-famous musician in 2026 and instead a more stable career as a “spreadsheet making machine”. “You’re scaring off the kids / They probably turn it off before the end,” he frets over ironically some of the album’s catchiest melodies. After hearing this gleeful, brilliant record, one can only hope and pray he doesn’t take his own advice.

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