Art, culture and the best of what’s on in Wales

A graduate of the 90s Minneapolis punk scene, Craig Finn has kept those values wrapped around him while ascending to a sort of heartland rock / post-Springsteen cultdom in The Hold Steady. He’s also released five solo albums, and hits Cardiff on his tod with a back catalogue roughly the length of an average workday.

Fourteen concerts in 10 days amounts to a burst of activity in this part of the Vale Of Glamorgan, rarely troubled by live music during the rest of the year. The Cowbridge Music Festival’s remit centres on classical, folk and jazz, but is liberal in its definition of those terms. One might deem the music …

Lavish Welsh-language indie from Aberystwyth.

Minnesotan country/blues/folk sort Charlie Parr has been plucking away since around the turn of the millennium and has visited Wales on a couple of previous occasions in the last decade; this is his debut in Abergavenny, I think, with his most recent album released through the iconic Smithsonian Folkways label.

Fourteen concerts in 10 days amounts to a burst of activity in this part of the Vale Of Glamorgan, rarely troubled by live music during the rest of the year. The Cowbridge Music Festival’s remit centres on classical, folk and jazz, but is liberal in its definition of those terms. One might deem the music …

Fourteen concerts in 10 days amounts to a burst of activity in this part of the Vale Of Glamorgan, rarely troubled by live music during the rest of the year. The Cowbridge Music Festival’s remit centres on classical, folk and jazz, but is liberal in its definition of those terms. One might deem the music …

Japanese concert pianist with some 40 years of experience at the top end of the discipline, Ogawa lives and teaches in London, as well as Tokyo as a visiting professor. Her repertoire encompasses modern composition as well as the older canon, although it’s the latter – Chopin, Debussy, Beethoven, Ravel – she’ll be concentrating on …

Fourteen concerts in 10 days amounts to a burst of activity in this part of the Vale Of Glamorgan, rarely troubled by live music during the rest of the year. The Cowbridge Music Festival’s remit centres on classical, folk and jazz, but is liberal in its definition of those terms. One might deem the music …

This is neo-prog rock manifest, and by ‘neo’ I mean the sort of thing coined in the early 80s with bands like Marillion at the forefront. Big Big Train themselves, from the English south coast, formed in 1990 and feature six members, according to their Wikipedia page, or seven going by their main promo photo. …

Fourteen concerts in 10 days amounts to a burst of activity in this part of the Vale Of Glamorgan, rarely troubled by live music during the rest of the year. The Cowbridge Music Festival’s remit centres on classical, folk and jazz, but is liberal in its definition of those terms. One might deem the music …

The fest (actually an alldayer) is called Cardiff DIY, but the promoters are called DIY Cardiff, named after their habit of putting on DIY gigs in Cardiff. Having done so for 10 years, this is a self-toast in the form of 12 punk/indie type acts, including Gimic, Campfire Social, Bedford Falls, Shell and The Doublecross.

Fourteen concerts in 10 days amounts to a burst of activity in this part of the Vale Of Glamorgan, rarely troubled by live music during the rest of the year. The Cowbridge Music Festival’s remit centres on classical, folk and jazz, but is liberal in its definition of those terms. One might deem the music …

Fourteen concerts in 10 days amounts to a burst of activity in this part of the Vale Of Glamorgan, rarely troubled by live music during the rest of the year. The Cowbridge Music Festival’s remit centres on classical, folk and jazz, but is liberal in its definition of those terms. One might deem the music …

In this game (writing listings entries) it’s important to be able to convincingly pretend to know what you’re talking about, and despite not really being familiar with “multiplatinum alternative-pop phenom Melanie Martinez” I think I got the gist of it after a quick skim of her Wikipedia page. It’s the triumph of the gothy introvert …

Melt-Banana, warra band that is. Operating as a duo these days, with a drum machine becoming their permanent sticksperson, on new album 3+5 they use this to add inhumanly fast speedcore beats to their batty, uncategorisable pop-grind blare. This fan actually ‘prefers the old stuff’ but I’m sure they still rock live.

Tonight Swiss jazz drummer Florian Arbenz is set to lug his kit up the Flute’s narrow staircase and lead a band also featuring delightfully named trumpeter Percy Pursglove and Jim Hart on vibraphone and percussion. Sounds like the trio are going to be on a somewhat Afro-Cuban or otherwise Latin-sounding tip. Could well be good!

Bev, a Brit-soul standard-bearer and surefire seatfiller in the nation’s bigger theatres since the 90s, makes the step-up to arena status in Cardiff this month. That said, the show was relocated from St David’s Hall after it was found, what was about a year ago but feels like a decade, to have hooky concrete. Tickets: …

These two fellows are both members of Brighton folk-rock rabblerousers the Levellers – Sevink is an OG, Donnelly joined in 2022 – and will be playing two acoustic south Wales dates this weekend. Dedicated fans can follow behind their flatbed truck as it belches and backfires along the 20-mile journey from Ponty to Abertillery.

Second Cardiff date for London band, already Talked About at the time of their first – last October, as part of Swn – and who have since released a debut album whose sound is something like baroque glam rock or so I read. Sold out months in advance, though some ticketholders may have cooled on …