Review: What did You Expect?

London punk/alt-rock project What Did You Expect? return with upcoming single Time, and it feels like the sound of a pressure valve finally giving way. This is the first taste of a new era for the project, and it lands with honesty, urgency and a refusal to sugar-coat anything.

The song opens with a beautifully understated acoustic passage, instantly recalling the warmth and intimacy of Evan Dando at his most reflective. It lulls you in just long enough to feel comfortable before everything detonates into a rush of frenetic punk energy. When it hits, it really hits - raw, restless and driven by a fire that feels born in the late ’70s but sharpened for 2026.

There’s a snarl here, but also a surprising sense of beauty. The balance between aggression and melody is spot on, blending punk, rock and pop instincts into something that feels genuinely fresh. At moments it’s like Rancid locking arms with The King Blues - defiant, heartfelt and uncomfortably relatable. The track captures that uneasy space between growing older and refusing to let go of the things that still matter, and it does so without ever slipping into self-pity or nostalgia.

Time is a proper journey of a song, shifting gears naturally as it moves from stripped-back introspection to full-band catharsis. It wears its scars openly, embraces its contradictions and sounds all the stronger for it. This is personal punk rock done right-loud, honest and completely unapologetic.

If this is what What Did You Expect? sound like moving forward, then the clock is definitely ticking for anyone still underestimating them…
because Time isn’t running out—it’s catching up.

Time is out on 27th of February