Scottish three piece Swim School have steadily been releasing very remarkable indie rock song after very remarkable indie rock song for the past two years but on latest single ‘delirious’ the group have decided to say a massive “fuck it”, turned their amps up to earbleeding levels, harnessed every bit of distortion and feedback they could generate and made a snarling, jeering, punk rock blowout of a single.
Digging into the difficult to decipher lyrics, the song is all about the rife sexism and misogyny throughout the music industry, singer Alice Johnson’s vocals are twisted into appropriately unyielding sounds to match the accompanying jagged guitar squalls and psychotic drumming, creating a mood that hits somewhere between magnificently aggressive and deliciously unhinged.
Swim School are heading out on tour shortly supporting the excellent Softcult and tickets are still available now. The group are also supporting the mighty Pixies on 17th March in Birmingham but tickets for that gig are very much no longer available and sold out.
Find the lyric video for ‘delirious’ below on YouTube:
Dropping anchor somewhere between the calculated cool of Wet Leg and the ascendant emotion of Mitski, up and coming indie dreampop duo Dolores Forever follow up their string of 2022 EPs with mesmeric new single ‘When I Say So’, a track built around an icily sparse drumbeat, sonorous bassline and a massive, synth adorned chorus.
Hailing from Yorkshire and Copenhagen, Hannah Wilson and Julia Fabrin describe their blistering new record as being “about reluctantly growing up. There’s the moment when you’re suddenly not the ingénue in the room anymore and everything around you is changing”, drawing on influences from Haim to Fleetwood Mac to tell their heedfully infectious tale of queasily becoming a grown up and choosing when to draw the line.
Dolores Forever play a gig at London’s Omeara on 15th February 2023 and there’s still time to grab a ticket.
You can listen to ‘When I Say So’ on YouTube below:
Wales has had a severe vacancy for too many years. Since the Manics and Stereophonics got comfortable filling arenas and Super Furry Animals split, Wales has badly needed an exciting, young, new band of national treasures. The latest contenders for the title have rocked up to Clwb Ifor Bach tonight for one in a string of Independent Venue Week shows and, unlike the other applicants who’ve sidled up and disappeared over the years, we think they may end up walking away with the accolade.
Ratoon
Local valleys boysRatoon get the night off to a rowdy start with a promising set of solid rock’n’roll tunes, boundlessly energetic frontman Jack Garret throwing poses with an extraordinarily red sparkly Fender held aloft, rolling down off the stage and into the crowd as the group bash out future single ‘Not So Pretty Anymore’. Even more impressive is how confident they sound performing with a stand-in guitarist while their permanent lead stringsmith Sam Davies is ill and out of action.
The Gulps
Invited all the way over from Camden Town, The Gulps represent the spirit of London, Spain, Italy and the myriad other places of the world they hail from in the welsh capital tonight. Their singles to date are all delivered with effortless flare in leather jackets and jeans, rhythm guitarist Francesco Buffone remaining the image of cool the entire evening as his shades never leave his face next to vocalist Javier Sola’s menacing sneer. When The Gulps took a larger stage supporting nineties masters Cast last year at The Tramshed, their sound took on an almost disco-rock sheen, the glitter ball flamboyance of recent single ‘Candy’ striking the fore, but amid the spit and sawdust downstairs at the Welsh Club the punk animus of ‘Stuck In The City’, ‘Mirror Mirror’ and April’s forthcoming release ‘Forever Young’ rule the night and win over a rabble of ferocious welsh music fanatics.
Trampolene
But this evening belongs to Trampolene and, to the tones of the Welsh national anthem, Dragon flag emblazoned with band member surnames ‘Jones, Thomas and Williams’ and the obligatory Cardiffian taunts of “You Jack Bastard” (Jack being a Swansea nickname and the name of their lead singer, for our non-Cymry readership), the boys take the stage for a wild tour of their ever-growing catalogue of cult classics. Highlight of 2021 album ‘Love No Less Than A Queen’ – ‘Gotta Do More Gotta Be More’s hypnotic pulse whips up the cheers and a riotous energy from the get-go. Recent single ‘Sort Me Out’ is proof, if by this point it was even still in doubt, that the Swansea lads can put together a massive, sing-along single, but it’s during ‘You Do Nothing For Me’ when things get properly turbulent, a circle pit opening up and then, in full command of his crowd, singer Jack Jones beckons everyone to floor, before they pop up again like a room full of Jack-In-The-Boxes (sure there could be some kind of pun there if we tried harder) when the track’s filthy blues riffage strikes up.
Trampolene
The spoken word continues to run deep with Trampolene as special-K glorifying poem ‘Ketamine’ has everyone screaming out the name of the gutter-drug horse tranquilliser and ‘Money’ nearly gets the room dancing instead of bashing each other up for a moment. After a rendition of new song ‘Together’, recently touted by frontman Jones as a potential future Welsh national football song it occurs to the group that, getting carried away on a celebratory wave of national identity, they’ve ended up running over time with still a chunk of undiscardable tracks to squeeze in. Their other spoken word budget-masterpiece ‘Poundland’ gets dispensed at triple speed, the angelic ‘Beautiful Pain’ is spliced into a medley with stirring classic Welsh folk song ‘Yma O Hyd’ that the band admit they’ve spent ages perfecting, finally descending into the rollick raising curtain closer ‘Alcohol Kiss’ and the group leave the stage to a local-ish heroes departure.
Trampolene
Considering the national devotion the Swansea three-piece inspire, could we possibly see Trampolene play Cardiff Castle in another 10 years? This reviewer can only hope. If Wales wants a new band of local boys to believe in, they better start looking at Trampolene.
Still haven’t heard anything by these three fine specimens of musicianship? Check out a track each from Ratooon, The Gulps and Trampolene below on Spotify:
Timeless and expansive psychedelic rock records don’t come along casually just every day, but that’s exactly what we have on our hands in Red Telephone’s single ‘Waiting For Your Good Days’. Diving into some of the most sacred corners of nineties college rock for inspiration, the Cardiff alt-rockers come back up for air grasping bits of Mercury Rev, Smashing Pumpkins at their haunting mellowest and JJ72, then manage to impressively pack it all into their finest single yet.
‘Waiting For Your Good Days’ sleeve
A sublimely empyrean chorus, singer Declan Andrews’ visceral vibrato vocals and a psych-flourish of synth and guitar that wouldn’t be out of place in the dream-pop realm of Tame Impala or MGMT add up to the sum total of a remarkable indie rock release and a masterful first single choice to launch Red Telephone’s debut LP ‘Hollowing Out’, due out on 31st March 2023.
If you happen to be mooching around Cardiff on Friday 31st March 2023 you can catch Red Telephone play ‘Hollowing Out’s album launch at Clwb Ifor Bach. Get on the last few tickets now.
Listen to ‘Waiting For The Good Days’ on Spotify below:
If you were paying attention and kept following When Tigers Used To Smoke after our June review of their ‘It All Just Seems Pretend’ EP, you’d know the Birmingham group had recently dropped the summery surf pop gem ‘Gull Rocks’, a warm-hearted bop inspired by what sounds like a cracking holiday in Cornwall. With ‘Gull Rocks’ being the lead single from ‘There I Almost Am’ you may reasonably predict that surf pop is the order of the day then, but you’d be wrong, as When Tigers Used To Smoke are anything but predictable.
The Birmingham band’s third EP goes on a sojourn from the surreal to the sentimental, throughout the wide indie genre, taking in dream-pop, small little bits of funk, echoey, jangly guitar, uplifting synth, with traditional britpop songwriting, all kept in line by singer Declan Boyd’s distinctively deadpan vocals. Taking in the surging, aggrandizing melody of ‘Hesitate’, ‘What A Way’, a song The Maccabees would have loved to have penned if they were still knocking about today – replete with a lyric about the kettle being on, with the choruses remaining ginormous from the first track to the last. Striding amongst a hubbub of original sounds, that’s precisely where When Tigers Used To Smoke almost are.
‘There I Almost Am’ was released on 30th December 2022 and has been available to listen to ever since on all of the streaming services. We’ve included a link to the entire EP below:
“Whiles I am a beggar, I will rail and say there is no sin but to be rich; and being rich, my virtue then shall be to say there is no vice but beggary”, said the other bard (Shakespeare) about the subject of Trampolene’snew single ‘Money’. The message from Jack Jones, the modern day Bard of Wales, about the ever baneful root of all evil is a bit kinder toward vagrants, but the group’s wordful magician of a frontman does consider how his opinion of wealth has mellowed more than in his younger years.
The Swansea gang would know their way around a catchy guitar tune blindfolded but Trampolene do what they do best when Jones’ verse is shamelessly centre stage, their new single seeing their poet singer recite a playful postulation on the awkward positives and negatives of finance over a squelchy, industrial techno beat with a bunch of vocal distortion added on the chorus to spice things up even more. Let’s just hope, for her sake, he never finishes paying off his mum’s mortgage!
‘Money’ was released on January 19th 2023 via Strap Originals and is taken from Trampolene’s forthcoming fourth studio album ‘Rules of Love & War’, due for release on March 17th 2023. You can pre-order the record now.
You can see the excellent video for ‘Money’ below:
Never ones to let the party end, The Gulps are right back with new single ‘Mirror Mirror’ just a couple of months after putting out the indie-disco-smash banger ‘Candy’. Anyone lucky enough to have caught them on tour in 2022 supporting Carl Barat, Ash or Cast will recognise the record as the absolute apex of their ferocious live show, as well as being a phenomenally unforgettable tune, ‘Mirror Mirror’ solidly capturing the mercurial energy the Camden five-piece deliver on stage.
Directly inspired by Jack Kerouac’s crazed sojourn across the USA in literary masterwork ‘On The Road’, The Gulps use the track to peer into a looking glass and discover all the many good, bad and ugly facets of the human experience glaring back at them, whilst sonically sounding like an early lost Strokes single with added Mick Jagger coos à la Sympathy For The Devil.
If you want to catch The Gulps unstoppable live show yourself you can see them at the following dates across the UK:
Friday 3rd February 2023 – Cardiff, Clwb Ifor Bach – supporting Trampolene Wednesday 15th February 2023 – London, Lower Third Friday 17th February 2023 – Leeds, Oporto Saturday 18th February 2023 – Glasgow, Garage Sunday 19th February 2023 – Manchester, Castle Hotel
‘Mirror Mirror’ was released on 20th January 2023 via The Gulps own Guindilla Records on all of the streaming platforms. You can hear the track on Spotify below:
If there was an award for ‘The Unarguably and Nailed-On-Certain Biggest, Most Memorable Songwriter of The 1990s’, it would go to Noel Gallagher. If anyone’s disagreeing with that statement, nay fact, the first three Oasis albums and the Britpop legend’s forays with The Chemical Brothers will prove them undeniably wrong. So the dip in musical quality over the second decade of Oasis’s career was an almost physical pain to the fans who had to endure it. It’s well acknowledged that aside from a few cracking singles and their reliably exhilarating stadium shows, their albums stopped being much cop.
The rise ofNoel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, then, since the guitarist ditched the most monolithic band in the world, has been a fiercely welcome one. Counter to the Oasis trajectory, with each release the ever-changing troupe have grown more and more compelling, previous album ‘Who Built The Moon?’ their most experimental yet. This whistlestop recap brings up slap-up-to-date with new single ‘Easy Now’:
Hearing the elder Gallagher brother speak in out of context interviews, you might suspect him of being the musical equivalent of Jeremy Clarkson, but the personality that shines through in this softer side of his songwriting, as opposed to his roving but tethered version of psychedelia, exposes a warm, encouraging soul eager to deliver messages of pure hope. There’s no reason to dissect the song’s sound other than commenting on it being a heart-stoppingly orchestral beauty of a tune, finding the frontman’s voice teetering on the right side of sentimental, casting a heap of uplifting lyrics seeing Gallagher singing to his younger Burnage-bound self and all who battled through it with him, generously offering “I stop to say a prayer/ For everybody there/ Your destination comes without a fare” like some cosmic, dream-granting, taxi driver genie.
As an introduction to his newly announced album ‘Council Skies’ (the album titled taken from artist Pete McKee’s book of the same name), along with recent Johnny Marr boosted single ‘Pretty Boy’, ‘Easy Now’ exhibits Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds carrying further on their upward trajectory by taking a break from David Holmes inspired experimentalism and sharpening up those simple songwriting smarts again, coming through with a feather-light hearted indie melody of a song. It also bears more than a passing resemblance to NGHFB’s past glory ‘The Dying Of The Light’. When you were the greatest songwriter of the 90s, who better to borrow tunes from than yourself?
‘Council Skies’ is due to be released on 2nd June through Gallagher’s own Sour Mash Records. The track listing is below:
1) I’m Not Giving Up Tonight 2) Pretty Boy 3) Dead To The World 4) Open The Door, See What You Find 5) Trying To Find A World That’s Been And Gone 6) Easy Now 7) Council Skies 8) There She Blows! 9) Love Is A Rich Man 10) Think Of A Number 11) Bonus Track – We’re Gonna Get There In The End
‘Easy Now’ was released on 17th January 2023 and is available to listen to on all streaming platforms as we speak. It also has a video featuring the excellent ‘House of the Dragon’ actor Milly Alcock that you can view below:
CVC have got the weed, they’ve got the blues – caused by their women and stingy bosses, and they’ve got a living room full of recording equipment, no doubt strewn with Pink Floyd, Harry Nilsson and ex-Beatles members vinyl sleeves. Sometime in 2020, the Church Village Collective (in case you were wondering what the CVC stood for) got their thing together and created a record out of the whole magnificent tableau, and what a record it is.
Sitting comfortably alongside fellow South Wales scene mates Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard and Pigeon Wigs or, casting out to their wider world, finding kinship with the latest space-rock incarnation of Arctic Monkeys (interestingly enough the album’s mixed by Ross Orton who also worked the desk on a couple of the Sheffield lads’ releases) ‘Get Real’ sounds like a bunch of mates having a laugh. It just so happens to be that this bunch of mates are highly accomplished, laid back lounge funk musicians with a penchant for buxom riffs and a silky saxophone solo.
One of the LP’s highlights is overtly built around a band in-joke, mocking drummer Daniel for being gaga about a bashfully reluctant singer named ‘Sophie’, with a tune that veers perilously close to Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’, but smothering it with enough of their own charm to make it barely noticeable. ‘Good Morning Vietnam’ mines another seventies quarry, fronting a Chic disco score with lead singer Francesco Orsi’s gruff blues vocals, while ‘Music Stuff’ is proof it’s possible to build an undeniable, original banger out of the most unlikely elements of slap bass and harmony infested soft rock.
With it’s pulsing synthesiser intro and dark musing on the cheek of The Man deducting some of their hard earned buck, ‘Docking The Pay’ is a surprise sober excursion from CVC’s light-hearted and stoned standard fare, verifying that although they’re having a massive laugh playing the part of feckless throwbacks from half a century ago, the South Wales sextet have barely started showing us what they’re really capable of when they leave the retro climes of guitarist Elliot Bradfield’s front room recording studio.
‘Get Real’ was released on Friday 13th January 2023 and is available to stream on all of the services right now. You can also order yourself a physical copy if you love it.
Regret has rarely sounded as tuneful as the regret The Malakites are feeling on new single ‘Morning After’. But what better thing to do with anguish over missed opportunity than write a big fucking rock song about it? Luckily for you and I that’s exactly what these Cardiff lads have done. Having already started to make serious waves on the South Wales gig circuit, The Malakites latest is a solid indie rock stormer to sure up the worthy hype that’s already building about them.
Beckoned in by chiming guitar that could have been borrowed from a Pavement track, a lightning speed drum fill chucks us straight into this absolute monster of an Oasis inspired song about messing up with a girl and then seriously wishing you hadn’t. And did we mention the killer false ending? Yeah, this song has one of them too, before treating us to one last blast of an outro.
Edge of Arcady 