From jangly powerpop to downtuned beatdown, with all sorts of offbeat burblings in between and far beyond those poles of rock, if it’s a Welsh release that dropped in spring and Noel Gardner felt inclined to say something about it… you might just find those sayings here.
Devonian transplants BRAMWELL issue tidy debut 45
Bramwell, a three-piece band who collectively moved from Torquay to Cardiff (first time I’ve come across this specific musical migration pattern), have arguably Welsh rock’s most pleasingly named member in bassist Avalon Vowles, and now they have a debut 7” single too. Problems, its A-side, is a consummate bit of bowlcutted retro pop with guitars tuned to ‘jangle’ and a tambourine jangling more literally. It’s got a streak of the powerpop I picked out when seeing Bramwell live in March, but shorn of in-person volume comes off as a little feyer, closer to mid-80s REM or The Clean, both of which I’m fine with. A cover they played that evening, The Yardbirds’ I Can’t Make Your Way, is rolled back out for the B-side.
PRENEW 12: Problems by Bramwell
Stoner rock with a few twists from CEMETERY DOGS
It All Seems Fine, the debut EP proper by Cardiff trio Cemetery Dogs, makes no bones about being stoutly in the stoner rock genre, with opening song (of four) You Can’t Have It sporting one of those classic coil-back-and-release intros – Fu Manchu type superfuzz that explodes into life just past half a minute. There’s a slight genre outlier too, one of those hammering Little Richard/pub rock rhythms that feel like it should be played on an electric piano but isn’t, though Cemetery Dogs make it work. Thereafter, Pink Sky combines extreme lyrical simplicity, repeating the title in a punkish cadence, with a space-rock guitar solo and psychedelic reverb topping off the highpoint of an overall dead fun quarter-hour or so.
It All Seems Fine by Cemetery Dogs
The third and final CWMWL TYSTION live recording is another fine one
Tomos Williams’ Cwmwl Tystion project has been a real feather in the cap of Welsh jazz, not least for wearing its Welshness (while simultaneously interrogating it) as opposed to simply being jazz created in Wales. Its third instalment, Empathy, concludes the project in fine style: like the previous two, Witness and Riot!, selected live performances have been edited into an album, one which dances round notions of funk, folk, fusion and freeness while ever-keen to avoid locking into a single style. Williams, a trumpeter, enlisted the project’s first two overseas musicians in bassist Melvin Gibbs and guitarist Nguyên Lê, who dually take this to places Witness and Riot! didn’t explore. Conversely, Eadyth Crawford is retained from the latter suite, and her vocal interplay with Mared Williams lend Empathy soul and grace.
Cwmwl Tystion III / Empathy by Tomos Williams
Richard James, Gareth Bonello and more freak out as EVOLUTION OF BEAUTY
Richard James grew up in mid-Wales, co-founding Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci while in his teens, lived in south Wales for a long stretch and moved out west some years back. The Music Is Dreaming, his new release as Evolution Of Beauty, is a site-specifically west Walian audio document, based on improv recordings made in Pembroke Castle’s Wogan Cavern – home of some groundbreaking archeological finds that are being reported on as I write! – by James, his partner Angharad Van Rijswijk, Gareth Bonello, Rhodri Davies and Jan Hendrickse. The heady patchworks of caveman percussion, woodwind and unrefined string manipulation which result are familiar territory for the latter two listed, possibly, but a big step into the free music sphere for the first three – who ace the assignment; this is really worth hearing if you like freaky future-primitive sounds.
The Music Is Dreaming by Evolution Of Beauty
Groove-metal proggers GODSTICKS stick to their style
Godsticks of south Wales have been at it for 15 years and change, with VOiD (their stylisation) the four-piece’s seventh album. Remaining on Kscope, probably the leading UK label for contemporary prog rock, the group stay on friendly terms with metal over 10 muscular songs – their chops are evident, though they tend towards groove more than carpal tunnel wrist action, and Darran Charles does a pretty good ‘AOR soulman’ thing on the mic. The press notes call this Godsticks’ heaviest album to date, which I get is the sort of thing you just say when writing these things, but to these ears it sounds decidedly dialled down on that particular front, set against 2023’s This Is What A Winner Looks Like and Inescapable from 2020.
LACROSS CLUB look to make small net gain with debut EP
Lacross Club formed as teenagers in Tenby a few years ago, forged a gigging relationship with the scenes in Swansea and Carmarthen, and have apparently moved to Bristol recently. They’ve been reviewed in this column before, with a daft but unquestionably earwormish song called John Francis (Buy My House) featuring on a R*E*P*E*A*T Records compilation. It’s now one of five songs on Blesh, an EP available in minute quantities from R*E*P*E*A*T (on CDR) or Negative Tapes (tape) and collecting Lacross Club’s previous releases in total. Their thing is roughhousing garage rock with a bit of 1977 punk oikishness and some shouty absurdism not unlike early Mclusky; they will probably go on to write ‘better’ or more gracefully composed songs but these may not be as fun to rattle through live.
Is SIMON LOVE the one true prince of Wales? Why not!
As founder member of uber-indie group The Loves, over 25 years ago now,[Simon Love’s musical motif has been to crib from extremely American acts of yore – The Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman – but in a Cardiffian and therefore wrong (and therefore more appealing) way. He now operates in solo mode, albeit with lots of guesting pals, and his fourth such album is not in a different universe to The Loves, being a set of good/acid-humoured jangling pop with garage leanings. It’s got more dad-psych and alt-country bits in there, cite the onset of age if you like, and is titled The One True Prince Of Wales as part of an attempt to interrogate his nationality which permeates at least half of the album’s songs.
The one true Prince of Wales by Simon Love
Cambrian synthstrumental prettiness from USKK
The small Herefordshire/Powys collective of pastoral synthesists centred round the tape label Verdant Wisdom have been relatively quiet in the last 12 months, but there’s a new album – the project’s third – by Uskk, aka Jake Burgess. Regnum Cambricum is digital-only right now but a cassette is to follow for this suite of surefooted, atmospheric keyboard instrumentals. With Uskk’s running theme the ancient regions of Celtic Britain, here we reach what is now Wales, with tracks titled in reference to the Mabinogion and other Welsh mythology. Its opening and closing numbers are brighter and brisker than expected, almost like modular ambient stuff, but matters then become more doleful and dungeon synth-adjacent, with Imbibe Thy Fungal Elixir scooping the best title prize amidst some competition.
Jump up to get beat down with VIOLENT OFFENCE
The south Wales hardcore scene has been pretty solid for the last three or four years, with plenty of bands starting and getting stuff recorded. I think I’m right in saying, though, that of the ones who’ve started in the 2020s Violent Offence are the only group to release an album – Still We Conquer, released by scene-defining London beatdown label Rucktion. Violent Offence, who feature people who’ve been in bands like Dignity Dies First and Brutality Will Prevail, aren’t precisely in the LBU style, but certainly wouldn’t have been out of place on most of the hardcore shows that happened in Cardiff and Newport 20 years ago. The more downtuned, crawling and metallic these songs get, the harder they hit for me – think the hench chaos of bands like Cold World and Cold As Life.
Still We Conquer by Violent Offence
Travel back to the heady days of 15 years ago with WHITE NOISE SOUND
When long-defunct Swansea drone-rock band White Noise Sound had their 2010 debut album reissued last summer, it caught me by mild surprise, with the two subsequent WNS archive releases maintaining that feeling. One was a set of six remixes by people including their producer Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kember, which I found pretty forgettable. The other, The Circle Is Red, is an album of live songs recorded at three 2011 French/Polish shows, and I dig it a sight more, as these happenings of chugging bass, feedback and garage rock organ clearly constitute WNS in their element. I don’t believe I ever saw them in concert myself, but had I returned from the future having heard this album I think I’d have made a greater effort to.
The Circle is Red (Live in Europe) by White Noise Sound
WHY HORSES? & SPIRITED FOLLOWERS team up for two tracks
I have separately written positive things about Why Horses? and Spirited Followers, two Cardiff-based bands of twentysomethings, in the last year, and caught them sharing a bill just before Christmas. Now, with this digital single on the Bwgibwgan label, they’ve joined forces – as in, to make a recording featuring all 10 members from both groups. It’s a two-tracker, Ground and Jain Song, but the first flows into the second in a loose assembly of freak-folk guitars, rickety percussion, Greek-tuned instrumentation, what sounds like an underlay of field recordings and a religious lyrical bent – which has, I think, been apparent in Spirited Followers’ previous releases, though it seems to be Gabriel Lester of Why Horses? who’s brought it to the table here.
Ground/Jain Song by Why Horses? and Spirited Followers
words NOEL GARDNER
