When creating rock’n’roll music you have a few choices: you can have your music reflect the warts and all world you live in or you can fuck off the world you live in and create your own day-glo paradise. West Lothian quintet The Tropicanas opt for the second route, which is the reason why ‘Thoughts Inside Your Head’ sounds as if it was written for the gleaming Pacific sun more than their bracing Scottish homeland.
A potential song of frustration and crossed wires uses that same alchemy to turn misunderstanding into awe and wonder for whatever thoughts are going through their lover’s mind, stating the conclusion “I guess I’ll never know what’s going on behind those eyes, I hope a galaxy or an endless shimmering sea”, while the sparkling, chiming surf-guitars and ebullient drums keep the sun-soaked poolside party going.
‘Thoughts Inside Your Head’ was released via Strap Originals records on 2nd February 2024 after the lads won the label’s Strap World Cup, resulted in the single being recorded by the wonderous Jason Stafford at The Albion Rooms Studio in Margate.
We’ve put a link to the track on Spotify below but you can also listen wherever in the world you choose to obtain your tunes:
Swansea newcomers Stone Deaf have come stampeding out of the starting blocks since their formation less than 12 months ago, and their second single, ‘What Good Is Sorry?’, is an absolute turbo-charged, blues-rock tinged, beast of a tune, bursting with fragments of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s mean americana and Dirty Pretty Things scuzzed-up indie.
Distorted guitars and insistent drumming surge alongside singer Mike Pole’s incensed vocal drawl, right on up to the lyrically economical yet hideously tasty chorus – because, when a melody’s this beefy, the mantra ‘my my my worst mistake’ pronounced repeatedly, backed with a bunch of lilting ‘oohs’ are all you need. Actually, how about chucking in a colossal fuzzy riff to top things off, too. Perfect.
Single Cover
South Wales’ indie rock scene is on fire right now with the likes of The Malakites, The Rogues, The Rivers, Ratoon, Statues Of Men, Basic State, Subterrania, need we go on… and we reckon Stone Deaf have turned up with more than enough fuel to keep those embers roaring for some while yet.
‘What Good Is Sorry?’ was released on 1st February 2024. The lads played a gig at The Bunkhouse in Swansea to mark the record’s release and keep your eyes firmly on their social media for upcoming dates.
You can take a listen to the track on the Spotify link below or wherever else you get your music:
Spitting gritty rap-punk verbalisations over abrasive industrial beats, Erin West is better known as shortstraw. and her latest single ‘clean up’ is two minutes and thirty seconds of smart, self-aware and straight-talking disruptive lyricism delivered over a spectacularly scuzzy rhythm.
Sharing sagacious compact urban aphorisms, like: “Counting my loose change, I watch the world go by/ Fuck it all went up in flames, I’ll put it out with a pint” over solid electronic modulations, less than a year since the project’s inception, shortstraw. has already received the much-deserved attention and heavy praise of a formidable cast of fellow rap and punk peers such as SOFT PLAY who took them out on tour toward the end of last year. Endorsements barely come more reliable.
‘clean up’ was released on 20th October 2023. We’ve featured it now due to shortstraw.’s appearance supporting The Libertines at Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, tomorrow evening – 27th January 2024 as well as in at The Drill in Lincoln on Monday 29th January. Both dates are fully sold out.
When we used to wonder if what we don’t have would be better than what we do we used to pose the question: “is the grass is greener on the other side of the fence?” but Carpark have updated the conundrum for the post-Elon Musk, AI-loving, solar system colonialist era, on their latest ethereal dream-pop single, enquiring instead: “Do you think you’ll be happy on Mars?”.
The third track from their forthcoming ‘Born To Be Average’ EP (low-key relate), and a more sedate offering than the brasher, harder tracks we’ve already heard, ‘Happy On Mars’ has the London three-piece in reflective mode, letting their forthright, punkish sensibilities take a backseat to melodic, pure-pop skills whilst they take a few moments to try figure some shit out.
As mentioned, ‘Happy On Mars’ is the third song we’ve heard from Carpark’s soon-to-be-released ‘Born To Be Average’ EP, due out in February. The other tracks we’ve heard so far being the sublime ‘MIA’ and ‘Suburbs of Hell’.
Carpark are also supporting The Libertines at Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff this coming Saturday 27th January and Monday 29th January at The Drill in Lincoln. All tickets are very sold out.
Annie Hardy is not arsed. It’s time to write a new EP? Yeah, I’m just gonna channel it straight out of the ether when the studio time starts. The resultant songs forming the ‘Cross Bearer’ EP are five brittly affecting, humour-laced goth-folk tunes? *shrugs*. And this isn’t a new development, either. Her debut album ‘Hearts and Unicorns’, released in 2005 as half of the duo Giant Drag, was received with loud critical acclaim, but the follow-up EP took half a decade to materialise, followed by chequered spans of sporadic Giant Drag and solo creations. Last year saw Harding up the ante with a mighty 12 releases over 6 months, but don’t be mistaken, she still barely gives a shit.
Thankfully, her level of enthusiasm bears no sway over whether her tunes are much cop, as the ‘Cross Bearer’ EP is frankly exquisite (or maybe apathy is excellent and that’s why it’s so ace). Throughout the course of the record the LA artist utilises spooky theremin, jaunty organ, vulnerable acoustic guitar and droll, free-form word association to break down heartbreak, frustration, alien abduction and rugs whose mothers never gave them a hug. Like a grungy Adam Green without conventional song structure and without hooks, remaining utterly compelling, trying to make sense of the world by having tonnes of aching knotted emotion but still opting to sign final track ‘Ghost’ off with a half-caring: “whatever”.
The excellent ‘Cross Bearer’ EP was released through Full Psycho records on 11th January 2024. You can find it on all of the streaming sites right now. You can also find the video for the epic ‘Haunted’ below:
Japan’s love of British rock’n’roll has long been a trope, but the traffic has largely been one way, with planes and planes of young guitar slingers heading east from the UK to make it big but far fewer Japanese songsters getting to make the trip in return. Enter brothers Shotaro and Youshiro Nishida, better known as SAHAJi, and their insanely powerful new single ‘Future in the Sky’.
Finding robust inspiration in their Mancunian Gallagher brother counterparts, the first release from the singer and guitarist siblings’ debut EP has prodigious guitar solos, an outrageously singalong chorus full of swaggering positivity and a sumptuously moving orchestral swell, gleaning myriad elements from generations of western rock’n’roll, from The Beatles to Jimi Hendrix to Oasis, and handing back some life-affirmingly melodic self-assured bounty in return.
‘Future In The Sky’ was released via Flip Flop Records on 12th January 2023. The lead track is available on all streaming services as we speak and the full debut EP is available to buy on CD for less than a fiver. The full track listing is below:
1) The Future In The Sky 2) Tell Me All Your Feelings 3) I Wanna Be There 4) The Future In The Sky
The lads are currently slap bang in the middle of a string of UK live dates with the following two dates remaining:
Dutch DIY-punk noisemakers Real Farmer’s second single on Strap Originals is a gloriously ramshackle vitriolic sideswipe at the self-righteously sober. Preaching from the viewpoint of the victoriously misanthropic, ‘The Straightest Line’ uses razor sharp guitar lines, breakneck drumming and frontman Jeroen Klootsema’s Joe Strummer-like vocal bark to put forward the well considered case of the highly productive, super-functioning and intentional wreck-head.
As far as prickly, catchy, punk rock statements go, the second track to be taken from the Groningen group’s upcoming debut LP ‘Compare What’s There’ is a hectic and rapturous one, with the self-assured lines “Don’t tell me that I’m wrong, I know I’m the good one” getting followed up by an exquisitely spiky guitar squall acting like a billion underlines to mark the singer’s perfectly salient point.
‘The Straightest Line’ was released on 10th January 2023 video is out in the wonderful wild for you to witness on YouTube below:
Tales abound through folklore and mythology of the equally deadly and healing powers of the Foxglove flower, some claiming the appearance of the plant in the wild is a sign that fairies are close, others believing throwing the leaves about infants cradles will protect them from getting bewitched, the destruction of the flora considered universally unlucky.
The science-based view of the Foxglove flower is just as remarkable as, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, it is cultivated for it’s attractive flower spikes, contains poisonous cardiac glycosides which are toxic to the heart if ingested, but is also the source of the heart-stimulating drug ‘digitalis’.
South Wales alt-pop singer/songwriter Foxxglove chose her moniker well then, as her debut EP ‘The Chaos’ is full to overflowing with mysticality, magic and atmospherics, equal parts harmonically pretty, emotionally medicinal as well as being sentimentally cutting, using EDM beats and her impassioned vocals to write a collection of feeling-packed personal and ubiquitous stories, helped along by guitarist Jed Robertson, fellow songwriter Violet Skies and Cardiff artist and impresario Minas.
First track ‘City’ is a fitting start, the solo performer’s debut single release in 2020 elegiacally documenting the formative self-discovery of the singer’s move from the Valleys to Cardiff, encased in mesmeric rhythms and heavy bass.
‘Dear You’ is a pleading, confessional note from the musician to herself, declaring “my lungs fill up with the smoke of my thoughts / when I feel like I’m doing well I get knocked down / always end up like this, I’m sick of it”, Minas’s production injecting soaring, uplifting dance beats into the proceedings. The second Minas co-creation follows with the largely minimalist piano based ‘Bad Timing’, broken up halfway through with more explosive electronics.
The record’s collaboration with Violet Skies, ‘Family Ties’, sees the pair plumb Julien Baker level depths of emotion accompanied by trip-hop stylings. ‘High On Hope’ propels the EP into pure reassuring ecstatic abandon before ‘The Chaos’ slams back down to a halting end with leaden drums and guitars creating an almost ear-busting metal-rock finale, where up until now we’ve had mostly austere and animated beats and keys, as the singer triumphantly, sagely pays off: “sometimes you have to learn to hold your own hand / and the cards you get dealt are out of your control / I guess you find calm in the chaos after all”. Overall, a record like the performer’s ‘digitalis pupurea’ namesake, containing extremely powerful, potent properties to both wound and regenerate.
‘The Chaos’ EP was released on 8th December 2023 and is available on all of the streaming platforms. We’ve put the video for ‘Bad Timing’ down below for you to watch before you run off to whichever platform you prefer to hear the whole thing:
Drifting in with dreamy strumming and gentle vocals, we presumed at first that Bristol and Newport’s AIRFLO had gifted us a charming little acoustic number for their second single. As we sat and listened, however, it became searingly obvious that ‘Swansong‘ is a bit more of a hefty, profound beast than its tender opening chimes portray.
The indie four-piece craft an empathetic, soulful message to a former lover alongside swooning guitar, a brittle tune and audibly aching vocal. But when the outpouring of indomitable affection ceases a whole powerful wall of sound comes cascading in, thundering drums and all, to truly make sure you’ve been brutally yet delectably whacked in the feelings.
‘Swansong’ was released during the final throes of 2023, on the 8th December in fact. It’s available to hear on all streaming services right now. You can have a watch of the official video right here on this very site through this here Youtube link, too:
“Heaven is this place” croons Midding singer Joe Woodward, enigmatic and barely audible beneath layers and layers of sludgy beats, mesmerizing keyboards and possibly some guitar (we can’t hear any but he’s strumming on one in the video so we suspect it’s in the mix there somewhere), doling out celestial overtones to some already intensely other-worldly, shoegaze artistry.
The Cardiff-based quartet formerly known as Clwb Fuzz maintain the lo-fi grunge melody of their prior incarnation on ‘And Then, They Sing’, along with earlier single ‘Anything (Until You Sleep)’ but, frisky under their new moniker, the easy tunes are trapped behind the smoky glass of some gorgeously unsettling, hazy, apocalyptic production.
‘And Then, They Sing’ was released at the tail end of 2023, on 8th December. You can find it on all of the streaming services now. Or, if you’re more of a visual kinda guy or gal, you can take a watch of the video on the YouTube link below:
Edge of Arcady 