RECENT WELSH MUSIC YOU MAY HAVE MISSED | REVIEW
It’s October, it’s me (the person writing this), it’s us (Buzz magazine) and it’s the second edition of this monthly grab bag of local output that slipped through the proverbial cracks and/or didn’t fit in any of this website’s crannies. September’s column concentrated on the weirder stuff mostly, this one is going to skew a bit more radio-friendly. Mostly.
Ayesha Pontin, who goes by the simpler Ayesha on record, is a Swansea country-rock type who released her debut album in 2014 after plugging away on the American bar scene. Nocturne, its self-released successor, is touted as a labour of love and perfectionism, as the six-year gestation might suggest – likewise the presence of Ayesha’s husband, popular blues-rock fella Mark Pontin, as her main backing musician. Largely at the slicker end of country, though rocking out more stoutly on Get Low, in vocal, arrangement and musicianship terms it seems like Ayesha totally nailed what she was going for here.
“Hi, take a look at this, thanks.” Not my words but those (via email) of Eilir Pierce, a north Walian musician based in Cardiff, and referring to Yuke Yl Lady, a cassette [left] released on his own Tapiau Pupa label. As the title rather clunkily telegraphs, these songs – various in Welsh and English – are ukulele-based ditties, with Pierce home-recording his croons and strums for what he says is a return to the home-taping gambit he first tried out as a schoolboy in the mid-90s. Fans of Sweet Baboo and Daniel Johnston may dig his eccentric intimacy.
Efa Supertramp [top] is another case of the slowly percolating second album, her debut Rhyddid Yw Y Freuddwyd having come out in 2015, and another transplanted north Wales strummer – currently London-based after a good few years in Cardiff. Also a member of ‘rave punk’ ensemble Killdren, of fleeting Kill Tory Scum fame, in solo mode it’s just her and an acoustic guitar she fair pummels while singing rabble-rousing paeans to nomadic life, injustice, departed friends, the counterculture and such. That’s what you get on Apocalipstick Blues (Afiach), again bilingual albeit mostly in English, and it’s stirring stuff, though at 66 minutes it might leave you drained by the end.
El Goodo, from Resolven near Neath, have been doing their thing for over two decades, and because I have too I remember them from the early part of that timespan. Zombie, released on the Super Furry-affiliated Strangetown Records, is their fourth album, and they edge closer to the platonic ideal of their specific musical niche with each one. That niche is late 60s-style psychedelic guitar pop, veering into the garage and country-rock styles from the same decade, with bags of harmonies and layers of extra instrumentation – and the quartet (joined here by various guests such as the aforementioned Sweet Baboo) really do have it down spot on at this point.
Huw Marc Bennett used to go by the name Susso, and in that incarnation released an album, Keira, recorded in Gambia with a lineup of griot musicians. He’s from the Vale Of Glamorgan, hence his debut solo album Tresilian Bay (Albert’s Favourites) being named after a sandy spot down St Donats way, but lives in London and hangs out among the impressively creative Total Refreshment Centre scene there. On this occasion, though, he’s out on his own (guest vocals from Miryam Solomon notwithstanding) and stitching together extremely lush tropical jazz grooves with a dancefloor-friendly spine. Big mid-70s Brazilian vibes make good with Afro-funk and disco, just like a typical trip to the Vale seaside in short.
Another local figure with two decades – or nigh on that – of music under his belt is James Kennedy [above], who has released music as Kennedy and as frontman of the band Kyshera. He’s also about to publish a book, Noise Damage: My Life As A Rock’n’Roll Underdog, detailing his grand ambitions colliding head-on with the vagaries of the music biz – and just before it, new album Make Anger Great Again (Konic), his fourth full release under his full name. It’s primarily a suite for big, catchy riffs and tight, snazzy arrangements, with more than a few solos and basslines taking it into unabashed funk-metal territory. I can imagine many of these songs, soaring refrains and slogan-happy political lyrics a-go-go, enlivening the early-90s MTV schedules alongside Living Colour or someone.
J. Willgoose from the arch electronic pop duo Public Service Broadcasting is not a Welsh musician, or if he is has kept this carefully hidden along with his real name. He appears to have a degree of affinity with this blasted place, however, first commemorating its mining heritage in the band’s 2017 album Every Valley and now launching his solo project, Late Night Final, with The Human Touch – an 11-minute track aided by the vocal contribution of Cardiff experimental artist Teddy Hunter. Additionally, if you click on either of those two links you should find the video for said track, directed by fellow Cardiff resident Nic Finch and akin to being trapped in a big lava lamp. Musically, it’s a similarly gloopy ambient affair that fades in quietly and eventually builds to something on an early 70s Krautrock tip, so that’s nice; the Late Night Final album is due in mid-December.
An ambitious, if relatively compact, and instrumentally spectral CD has just been released by Lynne Plowman, a composer based just outside Cardiff who is possibly best known for Gwyneth And The Green Knight, her family opera from 2002. Her latest work, The Beachcomber (Prima Facie), in fact stems from two separately conceived ones threaded together, although you’d never suppose a discrepancy. Five of the 14 pieces here were written for and performed by O Duo, a percussion two-piece: I’m especially taken with the marimba on Pedalling Man. Four more feature tenor Michael Bennett vocalising poems by Russell Hoban, each drawing on sea-bound imagery both naturalist and fantastical, with accompaniment by harpist Sandrine Chatron. Solo piano and harp excursions complete an intimate, resonant and very worthwhile release.
The debut single by The Nightmares from Newport (give or take) follows up a 2019 EP, released on cassette. This time it’s a two-song 7”, or will be around the end of October when the vinyl turns up, and is released by new Cardiff label Stereo Brain. The Falling Dream splices 00s emo-rock, 80s synthpop and another style I can’t quite place although there must be one as this song reminds me of Idlewild who are neither of the things I mentioned. B-side Give Up The Hoax emerges on glimmering pop-rock synths, the sort of sound bands like Private World have been mining of late, and ticks along purposefully yet introspectively.
I Don’t Really Like It (Clwb Creative), the third single by Cardiff’s Panic Shack, is like Seven Nation Army if it was by The Lovely Eggs. I have the feeling there is an imagined target audience for it, and that I am not included in it. The song’s video (see link) features an extravagantly dancing man wearing only underpants and googly plastic eyes over his actual eyes, and was co-directed by Jaydon Martin – formerly employed making videos for Buzz magazine itself, now returned to his home planet of Australia.
Déjà vu takes hold as we encounter another sophomore album by an accessible, country-adjacent Welsh singer-songwriter who goes by her first name only: When I Wake Up (CEG) by Sera Zyborska [above], or Sera to you. Following up her 2016 debut Little Girl, the Caernarfon native claims to be inspired by steampunk among other things, although few if any of these 11 songs evoke the image of a top hat with some cogs glued to it; rather, Sera’s soaring voice, an ever-present folk-rock violin and a sense of lyrical intrigue within songs such as The Door maintain the album’s momentum. Feels aimed in equal proportion to Latitude Festival twentysomethings, Radio 2 drivetime dads and fans of someone like Taylor Swift, an unusual if not wholly illogical alliance.
The cover of Stephen Wheel’s Sun Sessions mini-album (Chasing Magpies) features a bunch of flowers resplendent in the sunshine while three young girls frolic in the distance. They’re Stephen’s daughters, and as well and singing and talking a bit on this release they play a role in its conception – it was written and recorded during the spring/summer lockdown period, which allowed this alt-folky type to take stock of the good things in life, including his family. Indeed, these seven songs are broadly effervescent, variously suggestive of plaid-clad American alt-folk and more eccentric British acts. A solo project in the songwriting phase, Stephen calls upon many musical guests to bring this sound to fruition: as well as his kids and indeed wife (Amy Wheel, who plays sax on Delia Flower), Sun Sessions is bolstered by spots for Welsh jazzers Paul Jones and Deri Roberts.
words NOEL GARDNER