SHE
“Singer, songwriter, actress, movement, Welsh speaker.” According to her press release Beth-Zienna Williams, aka She, is capable of them all. Efforts to paint the south Wales-raised, London-based polymath as a fully formed pop star in waiting seem afoot – on the evidence of her current six-song taster, she needs to settle on a sound first rather than hedging bets via pop-house, Gaga anthems, rock-tinged lighter wavers etc. Prince/En Vogue style sauce-funk number Potential is runaway highlight, in fact. NG
AARONSON
This Cardiff trio play serious face post-rock with slightly smaller servings of dynamic post-punk and vaguely cinematic – post-cinematic, perhaps – ambient interludes. They recorded Appearance And Reality, this here 11-track album, in the Manics’ Faster Studios, which I daresay is a nice feather in the cap even if no-one ever talks about Faster aside from it being the Manics’ studio. Any road, this broods wordlessly with occasional rhythmic canters, and as a tireless irritant I enjoy the ambient interludes the most. NG
FADE FILES
Fade Files are only part Welsh, Cardiffian Richard Griffiths being that part, but their previously released tracks were in Griffiths’ mother tongue. This brace of newies are in English, presumably more accommodating to Londoner Mark Hopgood and Stefan Schmid of Swiss indiepop band Marvin (who I’ve never heard of but who have their own page on German Wikipedia). Following Your Heart and New City Sunlight offer pallid MOR synthpop which whirrs tolerably without quite delivering the thrill of Fade Files’ transnational premise. NG