Venue: Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff — May 7, 2026

Let’s talk about Rex.

There have been - and still are — multiple record labels called variations of Rex, but the one you need to know about right now is the one run from a studio near Islington by producer called Macks. T-Rex puns may be tempting but this is more of a velociraptor; smarter, smaller, more agile.

Last night the modest Rex bandwagon rolled into Cardiff for the first date of a tour headlined by grungegaze hopefuls Thistle and your next favourite band Ugly Ozo. And it bangs. Or slaps. (Let me know in the comments what other appalling 6Music dad lingo I could have used here.)

This is my first sight of Ugly Ozo and it won’t be my last. The Isle of Wight trio are fronted by Jessica Baker, who has a knack for teasing out gossamer light guitar hooks and then plunging them into a lava bath of grungey power pop.

With such a bass-forward sound it’s hard not to think of The Breeders but there’s also a lot of Bleach-era Novoselic in there. And I’m totally here for it with a big goofy smile on my face. The reticent punters are won over very quickly. They shuffle forward to fill the chasm between band and crowd.

Baker invites the man-heavy throng to copy her dance moves. They don’t. She pushes on regardless. The sister is doing it for herself.

But this is a band with BIG CHOONS not gimmicks. Hi, How Are You has girl power lyrics wrapped in a doomy swirl. Jackpot has a puppydog bouncy baseline. Godspeed has an early ‘90s indie feel and Elastica and Sleeper wouldn’t have turned their noses up at it as an album track. MISERY has the mix of lyrical hooks and melodic earwormery that might make it the song that gets airplay in a post-Wet Leg world.

This band are a hot playlisting away from really breaking out. Go see them soon so that you can make yourself look like a hipster next year. Their new EP Dive is out now.

On the changeover between bands the DJ’s musical choices are Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins – we are in grunge revival territory, Toto.

Thistle arrive and just rip the shit out of Wishing Coin, the last track on their magnificent 2025 EP Nice To See You, Stranger, which gets a full airing .

That EP’s songs are well worn in and sound fantastic; swirling, moody, riptides of power. There’s the tiniest snifter of Pavement in Cobble/Mud, while the EP’s title track is pure undiluted Dinosaur Jnr.

The Northampton band’s upcoming EP Backflip is out on May 29 and tonight is a first chance to hear it all.

Its lead single Pylon catches the vibe of early Foo Fighters and adds some shade to the white hot sun of guitars eventually bursting from Pieces. There’s a drum pad problem that threatens to derail it but at the 3rd attempt they unleash it without the pre-recorded problem and it still sounds great.

They run straight into Tied, a very short and fast injection of pace. That was a canny in-the-moment deviation from the set-list. Wise heads, young shoulders. It reinstated momentum.

Set closer BiteBiteBite has co-frontman Cameron Godfrey and bassist Judwyn Rushden thrashing around the stage in their full glory as Lewis O’Grady treats his drums with equally toxic measures of love and disdain.

Tonight feels like a set of moments rather than a cohesive performance but this first headline tour will sand off some of those edges. There’s melodic mastery and technical excellence but more than anything they just fucking rock.

It’s still very early days for Thistle yet there’s already something monumental to them. When this band are at it, they are undeniable.

So, Rex Records has two great bands on its little roster. You can see them both on this tour for about £15 which, in a cost of living crisis, is still really great value. Do yourself a favour and go.

Catch the tour here:

May 8: Manchester, UK – The Rat & Pigeon

May 10: Glasgow, UK – The Poetry Club SWG3

May 11: Sheffield, UK – Sidney & Matilda

May 12: Bristol, UK – Rough Trade Bristol

May 15: London, UK – MOTH Club

May 16: Southampton, UK – The Joiners

Date: Friday, March 20, 2026

Venue: Bristol, The Prospect Building

THESE moments come along all too rarely.

Geese are the new American saviours of rock and roll, it is proclaimed, and tonight they arrive in Bristol with everyone in a flap about them.

While the New Yorkers have very much been here before – “Last time we were here we played a boat” – it’s the first UK gig since the band’s third album Getting Killed went nuclear.

They hit the stage bang on 9pm – this is showbiz, baby – and Cameron Winter ambles to the mic, hoodie up, and after some taxing-looking deliberation, mumbles: ‘Hey’.

The rickety percussion of Husbands lays a typically unsteady groove for that Guinness voice; affectedly blurring strength and smoothness in a way that wobbles the knees.

It’s the start of an expertly built set. Geese are a ‘new’ band to many but they deploy their experience tonight in what feels like a pressure gig for them: the first night in the UK after oodles of 6music push and social media pull.

The question on everyone’s lips: Can they live up to the hype?

For a band with three albums of material, the 1hr 19mins set length felt a touch short but it’s an illustration of the desire to play a big gig with a straight bat. And they hit it for six.

They already have more than enough off-kilter sound to not need to play around with the vibe they’ve hit, but they aren’t afraid to jam it.

Yes, it’s just quiet-loud at times – none more so than Trinidad - but they let loud bleed fluidly into quiet and vice versa, somehow classic and familiar but also, like nothing else around at the moment.

The next Strokes? A bit Radioheady? Lots gets said about them, but they have breathed in these bubbles of influence and blown them back out as pure oxygen for guitar rock. It feels vital.

The crowd reaction tell you this album has absolute cut-through. Anyone who could get a ticket has come for a gander. Every word is sung. The push and shove of the crowd keeps everyone on their toes.

Geese’s recent explosion means the set leans very heavily on Getting Killed, but this is a band with a good body of work behind them and they pick judiciously from it.

2122 and Mysterious Love – from 2023’s 3D Country album – deliver the more direct rock wigouts the newest album eyeballs but never quite consummates.

When newbies dig into the back catalogue they will uncover nuggets. No, not nuggets. These are Chicken Selects. Meatier things.

I See Myself is possessed of an Exile-era Stones countrified falsetto soul – and it’s thrilling.

The new album is a less obvious guitar record than its predecessor and it’s a bit surprising Getting Killed blew up when 3D Country didn’t.

But its range is its weapon.

Half Real is romantic, capturing Winter’s occasionally Nick Cave lyrical tendency.

The Beefhearty Bow Down is a storming showcase for drummer Max Bassin. Whether he’s playing it lighting tight and high or thunderously low and damaging, he’s always gale force.

Cobra is already a classic, destined to be the Repitlia to Trinidad’s Last Night. Lower impact, better song.

And they knock out its hits, with a closing run including Au Pays Du Cocaine, Taxes and then, after the briefest off-stage break, Trinidad.

Before Trinidad, Winter calls for quiet, claiming to need to need silence to remember which song comes next. It’s playful, engaged the crowd, and tees up the inevitable explosion that’s been waiting to detonate since the merch-gobbling masses gaggled into the venue. It’s canny stagecraft.

The song crawls into being with guitarist Emily Green emitting surgical rhythm, then surges into RATM power as Dom DeGesu’s bass erupts under the shoutfest chorus.

There’s no topping that. Gig over.

Geese, whatever you might think of them, excite people and you can feel it in the room.

I didn’t come to the gig as a true believer, I came to be convinced. Winter’s stunning solo album Heavy Metal has had much heavier rotation on my phone than Getting Killed.

But I left feeling blessed to have been at this gig.

Geese Setlist at The Prospect Building, Bristol

Turnstile can become one of the greats.

Four albums in they have transcended — but not forgotten — their hardcore roots and their artistic and commercial growth has left other bands gasping for breath.

And that’s exactly how their fans felt too at a heat-drenched oxygen-starved Alexandra Palace.

You knew fans had been waiting for this chance to participate in the band’s blowing up, and to celebrate it with like-minds.

After a very sharp DJ’s pre-gig fluffing with Bowie’s Let’s Dance, to which the crowd sang along brilliantly, the band hit the stage with NEVER ENOUGH and flowed into TLC. The tinderbox vibe sparked as hoped and ignited gleeful chaos.

The gig didn’t have a pit, it was a pit. Circles broke out from front to back, left to right, nowhere was safe from the carnage.

Like the first 15 mins of Saving Private Ryan, limbs were in places they shouldn’t have been and at angles you couldn’t explain. Single shoes are held aloft in the vain hope of reuniting them with their missing foot. Clothing is torn. Human shrapnel flies. At one point a passport is held aloft and snatched back by its owner. It’s surreal. I’m not sure I can survive it.

The only reference point I have for this level of connected abandon is Rage Against The Machine’s free gig round the corner at Finsbury Park in 2010 to celebrate Killing In The Name besting the X Factor for Christmas №1 spot the previous year. That — like this — was a ferocious encounter.

It’s not just the crowd reaction that conjours RATM. It’s the music too. But there can be no simple sound-a-like dismissal here. Turnstile have taken the best bits from the hard-rock greats of the last 30 years and fused them naturally into their own nuclear fuel. It’s never pastiche.

On I CARE and LIGHT DESIGN you hear the ringing strings of Johnny Marr’s Smiths pomp.

The body-stealing earworm LOOK OUT FOR ME has the circular saw simplicity of Nirvana with a vocal hook to match; “And now my heart is hanging by a thread.”

DULL winks - on record at least - at OK Computer’s digitised vocal edits. BIRDS is pure hardcore.

SUNSHOWER gives you a shiver of how Guns ‘N Roses must have sounded when they debuted Appetite for Destruction. Its lyrical hook — “This is where I want to be” — is shouted into the face of every fan in the room by every other fan. This is personal and communal.

Behind the setlist is the band’s masterful fourth album NEVER ENOUGH, a song-cycle of melodies that bleed into one another through a consistent sound pallete with tracks serving as call backs to one another.

Bringing it to life are the band themselves. Frontman Brendan Yates is ringleader in chief, urging people at the back of the long, thin venue “We need you” as he beckons them forward.

His amazing leaps around the stage display the hang-time of an NBA star. He’s in the crowd in his mind and in this old theatre there is no 4th wall.

The band send a videographer into the masses and when a circle pit opens he gets his camera light up in everyone’s grill. The fans are projected onto the screen behind the band. We see what the band sees. Fans see themselves, and not in a tokenistic way. Then he’s lifted up onto foaming waves of crowd surfers and goes over the top, his light still shining into the darkness above.

The action continues from a ceiling mounted-camera which transmits incredible shots of the writhing mass from above, until the cameraman can get back into the fray.

It’s almost less about the music and more about the shared energy, but the crowd don’t happen without the soundtrack and the band sound incredible, so cleanly produced and musically precise despite throwing themselves around like metal confetti.

Yates remembers aloud London pub gigs in small rooms and has a minute to take in the prestige of an Ally Pally gig for the ages.

And then it begins again, that feeling of riding an out-of-control rollercoaster; exhilarating, dangerous, relentless.

The crowd is a riptide, surging you forwards and then whipping you back out. As you fly close to the sun of the front few rows the heat and the lack of oxygen are palpable. Someone benind me goes down. I’m pushed backwards over them like a slapstick prank. A group of fallers. A circle opens. Hands pull us up. We go again.

I return the favour by doing my Turnstile national service in the vanguard, feeding crowdsurfers over the top. My wife is passed overhead. ‘Oh, there she is’, I think. I’ll bet St John’s Ambulance had a busy night of broken noses and punched air.

As the gig finally sucks the last air from everyone’s exhausted lungs, four songs into a two-song encore, some fans make it onstage. Yates gets himself into the crowd. The energy transfer is complete.

It wasn’t quite Wyman Park, but it was the next best thing.

If you have a mother, sell her and buy a ticket.

I made it to 30 sets across three days and nights — here’s what I loved most

IF you’re a new music fan then Sŵn Festival is like Christmas.

In the earlying dark of Womanby Street in October, ribbons of fairy lights criss-cross the alley above the heads of giggers exchanging fevered tales of the amazing new band they just discovered.

“They were THIS LOUD,” they say, widening their hands in the air around an imaginary fish.

The bill is is Keanu-deep with quality. I love the idea that even though I tried to see everything everywhere, someone else could have watched an equal amount of bands but never crossed over with me once.

The value for money is plain ridiculous. For the £75 cost of a weekend ticket I watched all or part of 30 sets. That’s £2.50 per show. Who says gigs are too expensive thesedays?

Everyone’s pennies are at a premium. But at this price-per-gig I’ll take a punt on musicians I usually wouldn’t pay £12 or £15 to see play their own show. That aids discovery. It widens variety of taste. It gets me out of my 6Music dad bubble and into an Angry Blackmen or Manga Saint Hilare gig.

But as much as the programme has genre diversity if you want it, what quickly became apparant is that something really interesting is happening in guitar music. Someone sharper than me called it grungegaze.

So many British bands over the weekend were pitching it somewhere between Nirvana and Ride, between My Bloody Valentine and Mudhoney, or Sonic Youth and Slowdive.

And I am very, very, very here for that.

Thistle

Fuel, Friday, 6.30pm

Thistle have absolutely bullseyed the sound of the moment.

It’s Sonic Youthy, Dinosaur Jnr-ish, Nirvana-like, DIIV-y. It’s a wave of swooning textured guitars that made me nod repeatedly, like Beavis and Butthead throwing up the devil horns and repeating ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’ And then I started laughing. I know this feeling. I’m in love with another band.

I properly fanboyed singer Cameron Godfrey afterwards and pleaded with the Northampton trio to come back to Cardiff instantly. Yes, of course I got a set list. What do you think I am? Stupid?

Their debut EP ‘It’s nice to see you, stranger’ is crushingly good. I know because I’ve been listening to it non-stop since Thursday.

This excellent Substack profile of the band nails their sound as grungegaze, which I now fully accept as both a real genre and my current religion.

PISS

Clwb Ifor Bach (downstairs), Thursday, 7.30pm.

A band is hardly going to bother the 6Music airwaves with a name like PISS so they need to find your ears by other means — and that’s going to be via word-of-mouth and live performance.

They came with a Swn app biog that called them “the kind of band you need to see to believe” who “cover new ground that no other act at Swn can come close to”.

Hyperbole creates pressure few bands can ever match. And when the Canadian hardcore band took the stage singer Tay Zantingh ratcheted up the hype further by warning the audience they will need earplugs, and that fans need to clear a path for any people overwhelmed by the power of the sound or lyrics about sexual violence against women. By this point I’m rolling my eyes.

But they hit your with the first song the way Leatherface hits William Vail’s skull with a sledgehammer. It’s an act of sonic brutality which harrows the ears.

As the musical onslaught ebbs and judders, Zantingh imitates a child’s voice and viewpoint and the juxtaposition is a mental platform shift that’s hard to absorb. It’s a mix of performance art and hardcore. I’m calling it hArtCore.

“Everything around me needs to be controlled because I am not in control of myself when I am onstage,” says Zantingh.

The band have been making waves in Vancouver since April 2004. They are prepping to drop their debut album. I’m not sure there’s a speaker in PC World capable of rendering the noise adequately. See them live.

But until then, you can listen to them via Bandcamp.

Morn

Clwb (Down), Saturday, 4.45pm

When you come from tranquil middle-class Monmouth you can either don a Barbour jacket and start buying farms, or you can escape.

Farming’s loss is music’s gain. Morn are in with a chance of leading a movement back towards guitar-driven music after its decade or two in the doldrums.

Sŵn provided proof positive that an angular new take on turn-of-the-90s alt-rock has been brewing beneath the water while the Oasis media storm shines on the surface.

This is a post-punk pre-Britpop battering of brilliance from a four-piece who can descend into semi-psych wig-outs, pull a flush of good old guitar squall and then wrestle themselves back into hook-laden, chart-bothering ‘proper songs with choruses’.

Modern Man is the FM-bait, but to think that’s all they do is to be focusing on Bruce Lee’s finger tip when he is pointing to the heavenly glory.

That being said, Modern Man is out now on seven-inch vinyl via Speedy Wunderground, probably the hippest indie label in the country. Can I say ‘hip’ anymore? Too late. I’ve done it twice now. God, I’m old.

Morn’s set is a sweatfest. There’s no room anywhere, not even in that space by the toilets, behind the stage, where there’s ALWAYS space.

At a new music discovery fest a lot of people take in the first 10 minutes of a set, say ‘Meh’ and go to find another set. No-one left. No-one ‘meh’d’. They stayed. They sweated. They clamoured.

Get on the Morn bus. It’s going places.

Source

Canopi, Saturday, 9pm

As you can see from the name, Sŵn (which means ‘noise’ or sound’) is a festival in Wales which hosts lots of Welsh artists.

Source are exactly the kind of band Cardiff should produce more of but rarely does. Cardiff is a multi-ethnic and well-integrated city, and Source have corralled that into a very natural-sounding seven-piece R’n’B collective with enough fingers to push anyone’s buttons.

They present tonight on the tiny Canopi stage as a three-girl trio fronting a super-tight backing band, whose members are squeezed in around them. Think TLC vocals on top of Stevie Wonder keys. They’re a wash of uplifting neo-soul and are at least 10 times as funky as the funky pigeon believes itself to be after a few drinks.

If you put them on Jools Holland right now, they would work perfectly for that kind of mass audience as well as genre-fans. C’mon Jools, pull your finger out.

Spit Hood

Canopi, Saturday, 11.30pm

This incendiary digital-hardcore outfit have been coagulating like black blood under the surface of Cardiff’s skin for around three years — but tonight the veins explode open and the arteries spray everyone in proximity.

It was like releasing a significant firework in your lounge with the whole family round for Christmas.

The crowd became a pit, the pit absorbed the stage. Frontman Jack Davies kicked the floodgates wider, beckoning fans onstage and within seconds chaos has overwhelmed the room.

The stage is writhing with people, the band are obscured by fans, a woman falls off the stage onto her back, drummer Harry Sweetingham’s hands are bathed in blood — I’ve no idea whose. Jesus, what an experience.

Try their EP ‘Pictures of Spring’. It can’t be as good as this gig. But if you like Death Grips, wool helmets, facial piercings and needless toplessness, you’ll love Spit Hood.

Adult DVD

Clwb (Up), Thursday, 10.45pm

If you’re on the new music circuit with any regularity then Adult DVD already feel like slightly elder statesmen, but the reason I mention them here is because this set is an example of what Swn does so well: it finds, it incubates, it provides the right stage for the right band at the right time.

Adult DVD are all of those things. They are so ready to go; they are vacuum-packed and priced up. The world just needs to put them in their trolley.

The Leeds six-piece kick out a mix of synthy indie-rock and industrialised dance beats to which frontman Harry Hanson applies the kind of unpretentious ‘gives-zero-shits’ charm that other new bands would kill for. Synth player Greg Londsdale’s dance moves are worth keeping an eye on too. They are somehow simultaneously very now and very — shall we say — classic.

Wear comfy shoes — you will dance.

Nancy Williams

St John’s Church, Saturday, 9pm

I first heard Nancy Williams sing when she performed a few tracks at the Welsh Music Prize 2025 as one of the Triskel Award winners. The moment she started singing my mouth just fell open.

The 18 year old possesses the kind of soul-sadness that makes Sharon van Etten such a binding listen, but her voice also has some Beth Orton edges and her percussive acoustic guitar adds something of the Laura Marling.

At Sŵn, Williams played in the stunningly-lit spiritual surroundings of St John’s Church — a new venue for the festival which really needs to come back next year — and it was an ambient slamdunk.

Williams comes from the post-industrial heartlands of Merthyr Tydfil but is not making the kind of rock you might expect from that area. She’s now based in London, partly because Paul Weller has opened his studio to her, after some sterling middle-man work from film director Jonny Owen, and partly to study acting.

Check out her single I Don’t Wanna Grow Up. If it’s good enough for the Modfather, it’s good enough for you, capiche!

Silver Gore

Clwb (Down) Friday, 3.45pm

There’s not a huge amount of point in trying to describe Silver Gore’s sound because — in the best ways possible — it’s all over the shop. Dancepop gyrates with Briticana while electronica pushing in at the edges of indiedom.

The important thing to say is that it sounds glorious.

Ethan P-Flynn rarely if ever puts a foot wrong in my book and this collaboration with the classically-trained vocal changeling Ava Gore is the sort of mash-up you didn’t know you needed but now don’t want to live without. It’s like the first time you put jam on top of the peanut butter on your toast. It should be too much but it just works perfectly and you want to get fat on it.

Their EP ‘Dogs in Heaven’ will give you a good idea what they’re about. Keep a list of all the great female vocalists Ava Gore reminds you of. She’s Karen O. She’s Bjork. She’s a bit magic.

Silver Gore: "I think we've found a sound that nobody has heard before"

My Sŵn 2025 bingocard

THURSDAY: AKA, Kikker, Piss, Basht, Manga St Hilare, Tooth, CLT DRP, Adult DVD, Gans.

FRIDAY: Silver Gore, Gruff Rhys, KEO, Thistle, Scustin, Green Star, The Twins, Nancy Williams, Whitelands, TTSSFU and Mykki Blanco.

SATURDAY: Benefits, Morn, Rabbitfoot, Talulah, Shell, Source, Getdown Services, Angry Blackmen, Squid and Spit Hood.

VENUES: Jacobs Antiques (Basement and Cafe), Tiny Rebel, Clwb Ifor Bach (Upstairs and Downstairs), Fuel, Canopi, St John’s Church, Boho, Tramshed. I somehow missed Porters and so didn’t complete the full list.

The eight best new bands I saw at Sŵn 2025 — the festival’s best year so far was originally published in C-Music on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Principality Stadium, Cardiff — Saturday, July 5, 2025

USUALLY when hype peaks and excitement levels reach rabidity, the big moment can’t live up to its promise and the pressure cooks everyone alive.

But not tonight.

Because this is Oasis.

And this is the Oasis you have dreamed about.

As intro music Fuckin’ In the Bushes bleeds out Liam and Noel stroll on, arms around one another’s shoulders.

Liam offers his brother a Wayne’s World We’re-Not-Worthy bow. Noel seems surprised and rushes into a kind of courtier’s curtsey.

Opening track Hello, while not their strongest song on paper, delivers the apposite greeting and gets the first song out of the way — because everyone is nervous and emotional. They’re off and running.

And from that moment on — from Acquiesce to Champagne Supernova — it’s two hours of sustained brilliance.

In a world where Bruce Springtseen and Taylor Swift play three-hour concerts there’s no doubt Oasis could have played longer. But the message this setlist delivers is clear. There is no room for doubt.

This is a streamlined demonstration of power. Only three of the 24 songs in the set came from outside the Definitely Maybe-Morning Glory golden period.

The music is a dreadnaught. There are seven people on stage, not five, but the songs are delivered without embellishment, unlike when Liam played them with 12 people on his Definitely Maybe solo tour. The band generate a pounding, gut-moving physicality.

Liam was bang at it. Sporting buzzcut hair, he vibed like Jose Mourinho ready for war. Armed with maracas and a tambourine grenade destined to be thrown, his attack is unparallelled.

Liam treats the microphone with violent disdain, a visible fury that this pathetic object can only amplify his voice when what he really wants it to do is transfuse his blood into yours, and conduct the lightning in his brain down your spine.

Liam is the band’s transformative soul. Many Oasis songs are basic four-chord bangers. Noel’s ear for melody lifts them but Liam makes them soar. He batters the lyrics into submission until every note bends to his will. But he is more than a singer. He is sprite-like, a djin, a mischievous ghost in the world’s house, and he is active again after a century exorcised. It’ll take everything the Vatican’s got to put this possessed bastard back in his pretty green box.

Yards away geographically, but on a different plain spiritually, is his elder brother.

Noel is jowly and has the beer belly Liam’s consumption deserves. He is clearly emotional. Not detached, exactly, but lacking the triumphalism one might have expected. No Knebworth-style declaration of ‘history’ here. He seems weighed down by pressure and is trying to hide it all behind a guitar.

He barely spoke, but a few of the words he offered were pregnant with double meaning: “If you have ever wondered what it would be like to sing this song with other Oasis fans…”.

You could be forgiven for thinking he was talking about himself, that he had forgotten what was so good about the anvil he’s carried around his neck for so long. He was clearly bearing the weight of responsibility for this whole shebang, just like he always has. But through it all, his playing was exceptional. His traditional acoustic section, which omitted Wonderwall so Liam could sing it later, was note perfect.

If Liam is the heart, Noel is the entire rest of the wise-cracking robot; he is its brain, its eyes, its metal limbs. The list of songs he has wrought is indelible, but it’s more what those songs do to people that distinguishes them. Tears, floods of them. It’s a good thing the roof was closed or Manchester would have got a full preview of the set, such was the constance and volume of the fans’ singing.

Oasis have always been more than the sum of their parts. Break the pieces and they work well enough. But when those two combustible chemicals are put in the same petri dish a biological reaction occurs. They are heat. They are light. They are a scientific fact.

All the songs you expected to sound great were monolithic — Supersonic, Slide Away, Live Forever, Champagne Supernova — but tracks I hadn’t previously thought among their best stood to attention.

Little By Little, from fifth album Heathen Chemistry, generated as loud a singalong as any other that night. Roll With It, which I always had trouble taking seriously after the Britpop panto with Blur, felt like running down a mountain pursued by an avalanche of bouncy balls.

Ryan Adams review: Heartbreaker 25th anniversary tour

Oasis are thrilling in a way few bands ever truly are. They make the blood shoot faster in your veins.

If they can hold it together — and the chances of them burning up again is part of the reason you stare into this fire — then there is barely a band on the planet that can hold a candle to them live. Maybe no-one.

If you’re the sort of person who needs stars on a review, this was six out of five or a 12 out of 10.

If you can go to see them, then go — and keep an eye out for the free golden circle wrists bands on the day.

If you can’t afford it, don’t sell your mother to buy a ticket. IMHO, no single gig is worth more than a mother (current street value: £100). But just in case you’re on the fence, get off it.

Oasis still have time enough to become the band they always threatened to be.

Very few people get the world at their feet once.

Oasis have had it twice.

Just don’t fuck it up this time, lads.

SET LIST
Fuckin’ in the Bushes
Hello
Acquiesce
Morning Glory
Some Might Say
Bring It On Down
Cigarettes & Alcohol
Fade Away
Supersonic
Roll With It
Talk Tonight
Half the World Away
Little by Little
D’You Know What I Mean?
Stand by Me
Cast No Shadow
Slide Away
Whatever
Live Forever
Rock ’n’ Roll Star

Encore
The Masterplan
Don’t Look Back in Anger
Wonderwall
Champagne Supernova

Oasis Live ’25 review: Believe the truth — this is the reunion gig you dreamed of was originally published in C-Music on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“ROCK ‘n roll is a rescue animal,” says Ryan Adams in another wandering monologue on the first night of his UK tour.

“I mean, I know, objectively, that Kiss are kind of shit, even though they’re my 2nd favourite band, but they are my shit.”

And by a similar attachment theory Ryan Adams still fills auditoriums.

He’s is doing his best to be self-aware since the cancellation but this tossed-off line carries unexpected weight. Adams has only had his music to hold on to himself through his recent tumultous experiences. Labels dropped him. He (almost?) lost his studio. Friends disappeared. Even his cat Theo died.

He wasn’t referring to himself in that opening statement (he was talking about genre bleed) but he’s the rock ‘n roll rescue animal in this telling of the tale.

The music seems to be pretty much the only thing that has been there for him after the drink, the depression, the drugs, the disease, The divorce, Why do they all begin with D?

He has been coming to terms with his new found station — often in real-time on stage — because most reputable publications which would have previously begged him for interviews have ghosted him. But his audience is still there.

Every Ryan Adams fan has probably asked themselves the same questions.

I grew up on his music and I couldn’t not adore Rescue Blues if I tried — but there has been a very long and depressing journey to separate the art from the artist. Tonight, the Apollo isn’t sold out, but it is pretty much full. Secondary markets are selling tickets at face value or less. Unthinkable pre-2019.

All that judgementy-moralising is for a different article, but it’s hard not to let some of it bleed into this because his change in status — along with the loss of his brother Chris and his sobriety — has materially affected his shows.

He has changed as a live performer. He takes the stage in a tweedy three-piece suit with bow-tie, hat and cane. Where once he’d barely utter a word to the crowd, he’s now more guilty of over-sharing. Recent tours have brought musical improv, forrays into the crowd, dancing, mock-Ted Talks, stand-up riffs (*John Steinbeck goes unattacked tonight). He aims for ‘kooky’ but it sometimes comes off as a little untethered.

Twice tonight he embarks on monologues without a microphone. Audience members shout “MIC!” and “We can’t hear you!”. Too late, he shrugs it off claiming he forgot he wasn’t mic’d up. If true it’s a double senior moment for such a seasoned performer. It’s more likely a kind of winky shit-posting of his fans.

“People are used to me being an asshole,” he says, pausing for pointed-out latecomers to take their seats safely. “But that’s not what I’m doing here.”

Being a Ryan Adams fan has taken a lot out of people. There’s the debatably-produced slew of recent records of sometimes mis-matched cuts and his insistence on touring the same ‘lamps and piano’ solo acoustic set until it has drained the last dollar. There’s a nagging sense that patience is running low among those who came back to him after he was uncancelled.

Yet Adams is a master of showing just enough leg when the punter’s eyes wander and so tonight he debuts a new electric trio — The Devils — comprising his guitar tech Drew and merch guy Sal.

The jolt of excitement that greets the moment he PLUGS IN is palpable, and in truth it is greater than deserved by the seven-minute version of Bartering Lines that follows. It’s jammed-out and very loose. He cuts free in solo. It’s momentarilly thrilling. It’s been so long since I saw him play electric that I had to stop myself yelling ‘Traitor’.

Those non-Americans among us who missed the short-lived Cardinals ‘reunion’ haven’t been waiting for a busked Bartering Lines, but the fans will take what they’re given. He’s a knowingly frustrating performer.

The mostly dazzling 90-minute Heartbreaker set in the first half of the show often sees songs reworked. Adams says he learned a lot about the album while rehearsing this tour. He further draws out the Eddie Cochran vibes on Shakedown on 9th Street and then pulls a roots-blues from To Be Young that I never saw coming. It really works.

These songs are living things to Adams and they too have grown older, been through some shit, and survived — changed. But the retooling doesn’t always work. Post-interval, the flamenco foliage around Gimme Something Good is indulgent. The crowd tenses.

As Adams opens another comic aside between songs — having begun playing and then halted a track to speak — someone shouts ‘Get on with it!’

During the Heartbreaker set he promised his greatest hits but the version of New York New York he’s been playing on piano in recent tours totally shears the song of its rhythm and flow. Gone is the punchy anthemic ride. It’s a pale shadow of itself. He literally hits the wrong notes.

Oasis Live ’25 review: Believe the truth — this is the reunion gig you dreamed of

It’s noticeable that the ‘hits’ get disassembled more than the ‘lower profile’ tracks. Some feel overly-conscious. They don’t just breathe differently, they’ve had a few too many bones broken. I have no problem with artists reworking their music — it’s their music — but you will him to let some songs flow naturally.

The contorted NYNY is dedicated somewhat apologetically to Courtney Love who is “doing well here” since moving to the UK, which he says he’s considering too.

Then he drops an absolutely mesmerising Two.

For long periods of this three-hour set the crowd gets the Adams it wants. The banter is the right side of kooky. He’s engaging and goofy. He has fun with the high notes in Answering Bell. Guitar precise. Voice, pristine.

He says he’s grateful to be back at the famous old venue, is emotional at the turnout and he dishes out doses of full-on magic. Desire, played on his Buck Owens, absolutely aches. Everybody Knows distils and bottles the song’s fronted-out fragility.

The covers tonight include a tremendous version of Jimmy Reed’s Shame, Shame, Shame, an electrified version of The Velvet Underground’s Waiting For My Man and Bob Dylan’s Not Dark Yet. It’s a song choice suggesting that perhaps there’s a final act to come from Adams, a rage against the slow dying of his light, after claiming that this will be his last world tour.

Perhaps that final act involves playing with a band again, perhaps not. Fans argue their preferences in the chatrooms and Facebook groups. Ultimately, if you don’t like it, no-one is forcing you to buy the records or gig tickets.

Despite everything, he’s still selling out a lot of his shows and touring to hushed venues the western world over because — argue all you like — when he’s on-form he’s still a rare performer.

When The Stars Go Blue (on the guitar, not the piano) is unusually chirpy before a glitter ball lowers for Come Pick Me Up. And you just can’t argue with that.

The musical deification of Ryan Adams passed long ago, but he still has one hell of a perch in purgatory.

“So, what makes him so good?”

That’s the recurring question I’ve been asked by people who didn’t attend Bruce Springsteen’s gig at the Principality Stadium on Sunday night — by the people who have never seen him live.

So, that’s what I’m going to try to answer here. Partly because I want other people to be able to enjoy that experience while they can. Bruce is 74 and he can’t do these three-hour marathons forever.

His last visit to Cardiff was 11 years ago. I was there. It was my first time seeing Springsteen. I was attended as a reviewer for the South Wales Echo. I didn’t think Springsteen was for me. I thought he was too old (then just a mere 63!) but I am always genuinely prepared to be proved wrong.

And how he proved me wrong. I evangelised about him then and his performance went on to become a marker of quality for me: Was it better than Springsteen?

The beginning of a long goodbye or the rebirth of The Boss at 74?

In fact, he was so good when I saw him in 2013 that I didn’t want to see him be worse second time around. The Rolling Stones’ tours, for example, have provided receding rewards with each new show less than the last. Too old. Not enough new material. I love them, but thesedays they aren’t so much a going concern as artists as they are a going concern as a business.

However, I lucked into a bargain ticket late on Saturday night (Thanks, Claire). I was mildly hungover (Thanks, Chris) and wasn’t sure I had a three-hour gig in me, but I couldn’t resist. By the end of the night I was on my feet with my hands in the air, re-confirmed in the Church Of Bruce.

It begins with the quasi-religious massed groans of “Bruuuuuce” — which first-timers often mistake for boos — as they call The Boss to the stage.

Thing 1: Never mind the length, feel the quality.

Springsteen arrives, alone, strolling into a spotlight and speaks: “Cardiff, Wales. 1–2–3–4.”

The band strikes up and does not stop. For. Three. Hours.

It’s not just the length of time he plays, it’s the pace and intensity, with barely a breath between songs. He crams 30 tracks into a timeframe some artists would play 20.

Thing 2: The E Street Band

It’s not just the songs but also the way Springsteen and The E Street Band plays them. There are, I think, 17 or 19 people on stage. It’s hard to tell from my U24 seat up in the gods. You don’t get bands of this size and expertise very often. Saxaphones, brass sections, backing singers, multiple keys players. Wanted criminals could hide on a Springsteen stage and no-one would ever find them.

Bands with longevity who become well-versed in picking songs to create the cadence of a set are often be said to take the crowd up and down. That’s not what happens here. There are ballads (My City of Ruins) and there are dusty epics slightly lower on chorus and deeper in narrative (Thunder Road), but they rarely strip back a song to its acoustic base, or solo piano.

Instead, they elevate every song to its maximum capacity. Every track would be a showstopper for another artist. Watching this exceptional group of exceptional individuals let the blood out of The Promised Land, Spirit In The Night and Badlands is literally awesome; their fullness, their gospel fervour, the expertise. They aren’t there to drown out some weaker element, as big bands are sometimes deployed, they are there to turn everything up to 11.

Thing 3: Connectedness

On his regular sorties to the front row, Springsteen seeks out kids and gives them a harmonica — he did this at least three times in Cardiff. Imagine growing up in Merthyr or Newport playing a harmonica given to you personally by Bruce Springsteen!

On those trips to the front rows (up and down a lot of steps for a 74-year-old) he high-fives, he man-hugs and even allows himself to be held from behind by a fan who makes a heart shape with their hands around his belly. Instantly, he recognises the personal moment of intimacy for the fan but also the visual opportunity for the big screen. He doesn’t wriggle free. He leans into it, holds the pose. It’s masterful stuff.

He also collects handwritten signs. Springsteen fans make signs to request songs — in the example of If I Was The Priest, below, they have put quite a lot of effort into the drawing — and for the lucky few, their hero takes that sign back up on stage, shows it to the crowd, and grants their request.

Because of this, his gigs are not replicants. Sets have frameworks but are organic things. It is the sort of moment fans can only dream of when they go to gigs. It is at once a personal connection with the big man and a shared moment for everyone in the 60,000 crowd. All of them are equally jealous and appreciative: ‘Next time it could be me’, they think. It’s also a challenge to the band as you’ll see in this video.

Now the cynic in me guesses that the band might rehearse an extra 10 songs per tour and then look for the signs that match up with rehearsals, but even if it is the case that this is a gimmick then it displays its own perfection of the live music format that sets Springsteen apart. If this is slight of hand then he is so at one with the trick that it is undetectable from reality. And that, my friends, is the basis of magic.

But I don’t think that is the case. I think he puts the ‘genuine’ in ‘the genuine article’.

“Most bands stick to a very limited amount of material that they play on a tour,” he told the BBC.

“But I’m proud my guys can turn on a dime and play something they haven’t played in years and haven’t heard in a long time.

“It’s good for fans, particularly those that come to loads of shows. I have very dedicated fans who come to more than one show and I like to play a different show.”

There’s not many artists where I’d consider it valid seeing them past 10 times —like the beautiful nutter in this article who has seen Springsteen 37 times - but for Bruce I make an exception, for the above reason.

Thing 4: Scale

The setlist choices for a Springsteen gig vary like a safecracker’s options. The Boss has a million possible combinations to pick that lock after such a long career. There are songs he can hardly leave out; Hungry Heart, Dancing in The Dark, Born To Run.

There are songs he chooses to put because it keeps him and the band interested, distinguishes one tour from the last and brings the fans back every time. There are songs the fans request. Springsteen — the postman — always delivers.

In Cardiff there are songs from his debut album, from his classic 70s albums, from his more modern releases and even three cover versions. If Taylor Swift thinks she has Eras, she needs to think again.

The Cardiff gig has a 22-song main body, a six song encore and then the final payoff of a second encore with one song, I’ll See You In My Dreams, solo acoustic.

It’s almost a relief when it ends. For a moment I wondered if he’d never stop, if he’d follow me back up Cathedral Road on the long walk home and be playing in my garden all night as I pull a pillow over my head. My wife would take a cup of tea onto the lawn and say: “Bruce, come inside. It’s 4am and minus 2 degrees. You can’t stay outside in just a waistcoat all night. No, you don’t need to prove it. You’re 74 and this is Wales, not Wyoming.”

Thing 5: The man himself

At some point this will end. (What, this article? Ed.)

At some point Bruce will retire, or he will die, and that will be it. You won’t have the chance to go and see him for the first time. His hunger for playing with this vulcanicity is astonishing. He’s not ‘good for an old man’. He’s exceptional for any age.

It’s worth remembering that this was nearly all taken away from him very recently. Springsteen was forced to cut short his last tour as he suffered peptic ulcers that prevented him from singing. That might have been it.

Thankfully, he has recovered. His voice on Sunday night was sandpaper smoothe, but the longer the gig went on the better his voice became. What he may lack in silk he makes up for in charm. He encourages the crowd, needles them archly, makes play of his age. His guitar playing is effortless, his harmonica is soul-filling. He barely stops smiling at his bandmates.

He comes smart-casual, dresses semi-formal. His tucked-in tie, dark waistcoat and rolled up sleeves. The message is clear -he came here to work hard for you. There’s no arrogance about him though, just the confidence of a granite house that will withstand whatever the Welsh weather can throw at it. (Sensibly, the roof was closed).

If he is going to be the ringmaster of this 60,000-strong metal circus tent, then he isn’t going to wear bright red jacket tails and a top hat to do it. It’s not his style.

Thing 6: He brings the circus to your town

The following day, my family is at St Fagans Museum of Welsh life, dashing carefully under the low lintels of historical houses to shelter from bubble-sized raindrops.

The confused Welsh sun is testing its blowtorch after a long winter off. I risk being outside to look at the Toll House. I hear some northern English accents. I look up and see a dark blue Springsteen T-shirt. I open my denim jacket like a 6Music flasher to display the orange t-shirt bought the previous night. We chat about the gig. Those people wouldn’t have been at St Fagans but for Bruce. That type of experience was likely replicated all over the city.

Springsteen is only doing a few UK dates. He’s playing as many dates on the island of Ireland as he is on the UK mainland; Dublin, Cork Kilkenny and Belfast Vs Cardiff, Sunderland and a deuce in London.

Cardiff was lucky to have him. There is something particularly special about the opening night of a tour too; the sense of freshness in the band, everything a surprise unspoiled by social media, the knowledge no-one is toured-out yet. Nothing feels phoned-in.

Maybe, as the tour rolls on, that will happen. Maybe Springsteen will get tired. He is 74, you know. I just feel lucky to have seen that specific show. To have seen Springsteen again. In prime form. At 74.

If he ever comes back, take the chance to feel something special. Yes, I know the tickets are really expensive — starting at £75 — but there were 17 people on stage and a lot more backstage and they all need to be paid. This is one example where I think high gig ticket prices are actually valid. The t-shirts could be cheaper though. £40?! Leave it out, Bruce. I could get your name tattooed on my chest cheaper.

As you can see, I’ve tried hard to be comedically cynical about it — to find the chinks in the armour - and I can’t.

I surrender. Maybe you should too.

Bruce Springsteen Setlist at Principality Stadium, Cardiff

Six things that make a Bruce Springsteen gig the peak of live music was originally published in C-Music on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s 10.30pm and Cardiff is, unusually for this hour in this compact city, gridlocked.

Central Square snakes with train station passengers. Coaches and cabs are clogging up the narrow arteries of Sophia Gardens and Cathedral Road’s vertebrae are stiff with traffic. No-one is getting home anytime soon.

But those cars and coaches, those taxis and trains, are all likely ablaze with exhausted excitement about what they have all just witnessed; a prime-form Bruce Springsteen opening his European tour with a three-hour show at the Principality Stadium.

Skip back a few hours to the pre-show: Cardiff is a marvel of massed intimacy. The closed-to-traffic streets of Westgate and Wood writhe with pedestrians. It’s one hundred-deep at the bar with little chance of getting served by the reeling staff. But the atmosphere is high and the crowd’s dial is set to ‘Having It’. Stadium gigs become this city.

The main event approaches with 95% excitement and 5% sadness. The Boss last played at the stadium in 2013. Now, aged 74, and after a recent run-in with peptic ulcers that saw him abandon the latter stages of his last tour unable to sing, this inevitably feels that it will be the last time he visits the city. If he leaves it another 11 years he’ll be 85. I can’t see it.

In some ways Springsteen does little to assuage that feeling. After a pulsating The River, he talks movingly of the death of his friend George Theiss of his first band the Castiles, noting he is now the last surviving member of that band. He introduces The E Street Band members and seems to dither: ‘There’s someone missing. There’s always someone missing’. He recalls the late players absent from the tour — organist Danny Federici and sax king Clarence Clemons — and about the loss everyone in the crowd has likely experienced in their lives. The tone becomes sombre and some people in the crowd visibly endure moments of deep refection.

But Springsteen isn’t dithering. And he isn’t crudely looking for sympathy. He’s sharing something of himself in order to connect with his fans and death is the great unfortunate leveller. He hits the guitar and it coughs up Last Man Standing. His voice is a blunt force, straining through the years and scars to find the edges of emotion, and the power.

Six things that make a Bruce Springsteen gig the peak of live music

He is 15 songs into the set. There are 14 more to come. And there were 14 before it. This is the deliberate centre of the show. But this is a only a moment. A moment for shared reflection that he has chosen to make. And a moment that he then chooses to defy. A sombre moment he overwhelms twentyfold with positive brilliance.

Almost everything that follows is of towering scale: Because The Night, with a jaw-dropping solo from Nils Lofgren, is monolithic. Badlands, Born To Run, Dancing In The Dark, Born In The USA. It’s the kind of songbook some nations couldn’t muster in their history, let alone one man.

The last time Springsteen played Cardiff the track selection may have been a bit more crowd-pleasing but this set cohered better thematically. It is total mastery of the live form. Springsteen in full flow is an awe-striking experience.

He grants two sign requests (Better Days and If I Was The Priest), dishes out harmonicas like sweets to kids in the front few rows, hugs and is hugged. Scattered around those life-affirming moments are a pulsating Promised Land, the stone grooves of Prove It All Night and Spirit In The Night, and an irresistible Hungry Heart.

There’s even a throat-ripping cover of Twist and Shout before the group bows out.

Oasis Live ’25 review: Believe the truth — this is the reunion gig you dreamed of

Covers added a lightness of touch to the set. A swinging version of The Commodores’ Nightshift, from his 2022 covers album Only the Strong Survive, was particularly danceable. The song was illuminated by the sax playing of Jake Clemmons, nephew of the late Clarence. The E Street Band has been replenished in parts but this heart-stopping, pants-dropping, love-making, earth-quaking, Viagra-taking organism probably can’t last forever.

For the moment though, Springsteen seems superhuman, still.

He isn’t raging against the dying of the light. He’s putting new batteries in all our torches for the long journey home. This tour is just getting started.

THE SETLIST (Via SetlistFM)

So Young and in Love (tour debut, first time since 2013)

Lonesome Day

No Surrender

Prove It All Night

Darlington County

Ghosts

Better Days (tour debut, sign request, first time since 2017)

The Promised Land

Spirit in the Night

Hungry Heart

If I Was the Priest (tour debut, sign request)

My City of Ruins

Nightshift (Commodores cover)

The River (tour debut)

Last Man Standing

Backstreets

Because the Night (Patti Smith Group cover)

She’s the One

Wrecking Ball

The Rising

Badlands

Thunder Road

Encore

Born in the U.S.A. (tour debut)

Born to Run

Bobby Jean

Dancing in the Dark

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

Twist and Shout (The Top Notes cover)

Encore 2

I’ll See You in My Dreams

The beginning of a long goodbye or the rebirth of The Boss at 74? was originally published in C-Music on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

They’re psyche rock. No, wait — they’re alt-funk. Or is it prog pop?! Death lounge? I don’t know. Who cares. They’re different. In a good way.

EVERY now and then you stumble across a band that stops you mid-pint and makes you pay attention.

In the upstairs bar at Tramshed, Immersed Festival 2024 is in full swing. Grove is due on the main stage in 15 minutes but that leaves enough time to catch a quick taste of an unfamiliar name on the line-up.

And what a name: Epileptic Lizards.

I have no idea what to expect from that name. And whatever I’d assumed wouldn’t have been this — a rampage through the cityscape of genres, smashing together the buildings of psychedelia, alt-rock, funk, indie and maybe even a side of jazz (Mmm, creamy).

Before I realise it, I’ve been sucked into the gig game of cycling through the mental rolodex bands they remind me of. I’ve missed the first 20 minutes of Grove’s set, but I’m not leaving ‘til the Lizards have finished.

“There’s usually not one guy who’s buzzing a bit too much after our gigs,” drummer Karl Horanszky tells me later. That night, dear reader, I was that guy.

Why will I like this band?

Maybe you won’t. The Lizards won’t be for everyone. They will split rooms. But the people they are ‘for’, might just love them.

They’re a bunch of early 20-something music students who are all technically impressive on their instruments. They’re dealing in a style — or styles — of music that isn’t common for people of their age. They are a ‘band of bands’ too, with fingers in many other musical pies — though all see the Lizards as the main dish.

If I try and describe the music then I’ll make it sound shit. They’re one of those bands where each listener will take something different from it, depending on what they bring to it; a bit like a Harry Potter boggart in musical form. Are you picking out the funky hooks, the prog structures, the indie guitar, the psychey keys or the alt-metal mosh? It’s a soup of styles. A bouillabaisse with bass. See, I told you.

Though they’ve been together since 2019, the Lizards are still young and they’re going to evolve and develop. But where they already are is impressive.

What can I listen to?

Their debut single Telltale Boogie was uploaded for streaming on March 29. I’ve linked to a YouTube version for you above. You don’t have to thank me. I’m here to help.

It opens with a Primus-on-a-clavinet hook and Coel Gifford’s ripped-up vocal, and shows their tendency to mix things up even within songs.

It’s 3 mins 44 secs long, which is about as punchy as the band gets. In classic psyche-metal-funk-prog style they have some songs which are pretty long. One lasts 20 minutes.

“An hour-long song is the goal,” jokes Coel.

Karl says: “There’s a huge amount of effort that goes into four musicians learning a 20-minute song that’s composed, and performing it note for note,” says Karl.

“There’s also quite a bit of improv in what we do. Because Jo and Coel are very good at doing their stuff me and Sam are bad for looking at each other and saying ‘Let’s do some shit we’ve never done before’.”

Who’s in the band?

Main vocalist and guitarist Coel Gifford, 20, was raised on Britpop and the classic songwriters (The Beatles and Dylan). Coel is also in garage rockers Ceridwen’s Cauldron and plays solo with a more folky focus.

Bassist Sam Duval, 22, brings the funk. He’s into Tool, Slipknot and Miles Davis. Sam is also in Keyz Collective and performs solo. He’s a fun watch at gigs and has may experience rapture from the bass god Les Claypole.

Jo Mountain, 26, keys and sometime lead vocals, is the prog guru in the band. On Praying For The End Of Days Jo performs a monologue (as Greg Newsman) in a nod to Jeff Wayne’s War or The Worlds soundtrack.

On drums is Karl Horanszky (the name is Hungarian). Karl is also in Keyz Collective with Sam. He’s into King Crimson, Gong and System of a Down among many other bands.

The band’s engineer and producer is Alex Mavromatis.

Where can I see them play?

They are at The Moon Club on Womanby Street, Cardiff, on June 13, in a support slot with Rainyday Rainbow and Enabling Behaviour. It’s £5 on the door.

Look, here’s a full gig on YouTube.

Tracks so far

Telltale Boogie
CBT
Attack of the Metal Man
Praying for the End of Days
Heartstopper
Epileptic Lizards
Psychedelic Shake

Epileptic Lizards: “The goal is an hour long song” was originally published in C-Music on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The singer-songwriter on the pressure he’s faced combating perceptions of nepotism - and how it drove him to reinvention.

JACK Valero takes in the cool October afternoon air on a bench outside Tiny Rebel, the venue he’s just played.

After an energetic performance at Cardiff’s annual Sŵn Festival, he’s feeling a bit worse for wear at the end of his debut headline tour.

Clutching a half-pint of coke, he reflects on the journey he’s been on as a musician to find his own identity.

“There was a lot of pressure for me to prove myself and do everything I could and I think that’s why I’ve done almost every job there is to do at some point,” he said.

“I felt like I always had a lot to prove, so I wanted to prove that I really had it in me.”

After years of playing as a guitarist in bands, Valero is now front and center, daring to be a singer-songwriter.

On his debut EP ‘This Is A Nightmare’, he has experimented with lyrics and music. Valero says he has always loved pop for its tunefulness and hooks and he looks to combine the two with lyrics that “aren’t throwaway”. He uses The Cure as an example of what he means.

“The tunes are so beautiful and bright, but some of the lyrics are very macabre, you know? And I love juxtapositions,” he said.

In his juxtapositions, entertainment is just as important as the messaging but Valero wants listeners to think about his lyrics as well as enjoy the music.

“People will hear that hook and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, this sounds great’ and they’ll just love it for the tune,” he said.

“And then they’ll suddenly hear what the lyrics are”.

READ MORE: Nine artists you may have missed at Swn on Sunday

Valero comes from a musical family. His mother is involved in management and his father is veteran singer-songwriter and activist Billy Bragg.

“It’s inevitable,” he says, that this fact has impacted him. He admits he has struggled with comparisons.

“It’s not really fair (when) you haven’t been doing it long enough.”

“It’s worked because it’s given me my own identity whilst also embracing who my dad is,” he said.”

Valero was worried about people’s perceptions of nepotism and did not want to ride on his father’s coat-tails. He set about creating his own sense of self, choosing his mother’s name — Valero — instead of Bragg.

Initially, Valero wanted separation from the family ties, going through a period of banning his famous dad from his gigs.

“It’s worked because it’s given me my own identity whilst also embracing who my dad is,” he said.

Valero now believes he’s done enough in his own right to realign himself with his family’s musical heritage.

As a result, 2023 has been a breakout year. He played Glastonbury, completed his first headline tour and released his debut EP.

These achievements as rewards for years of graft in which he has created a sound and style unique to him — and makes Valero one to watch for 2024.

· Valero’s debut EP ‘This Is A Nightmare’ is out now on Modern Sky. Listen here

“I wanted to prove I really had it in me”: Jack Valero is doing it for himself was originally published in C-Music on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.