Those are exactly the bands I was most excited to introduce you to! 😄 And I’m more than happy to pass your more of their stuff—although I suppose given they’re all so new (barring Super Furry Animals of course, who were huge in the 90s and 00s too, most of the other bands you mentioned are at most 3 albums in) and all of their albums so far have been quite good! So you may enjoy diving into their discographies, but I'm also happy to highlight more songs from their albums.
Gwenno’s really cool, her first solo album is a concept album based on a 60s Welsh-language sci-fi dystopian novel, which was one of the only ones of its kind available back in the day! That album was in Welsh, her second was her foray into Cornish language music, and her latest, which is mostly in Cornish except for one Welsh song I think, kinda leans into the sound of Cornwall and then blends that with her signature smooth synthpop, she’s so very very cool. When her second album came out, it singlehandedly caused a 15% jump in the number of people the Cornish board said were sitting Cornish language exams! This was in 2018. And it was quite bold of her at the time to make an album completely in Cornish because there were about 600 speakers of the language in total. She was also in the Pipettes, and she’s done (and hosted i think?) the Celtic Eurovision. She’s very cool! (As for SFA? You know I could go on all day :P)
I’m really excited that you liked Fontaines D.C.! Their singer Grian Chatten’s dad made him memorise and recite poetry as a kid, in exchange for getting him football stickers, and over time he really came to love poetry on his own (and I think you can hear that in his singing)! They’re a band that formed at uni, they went to music college in Dublin, but they fell together over a shared love, for not music, but Irish literature and poetry! (In fact their first release as a band, which I don’t think is available anymore, was a poetry book. Not set to music.) They write so well, and they’re also really good stage performers! I was lucky to see them in a 2500 cap theatre in Montreal last year, I doubt they’re going to be playing shows that small for very long! They’ve opened for the Strokes and I think the National last year? They’ve done a daytime Pyramid stage slot at Glastonbury and Main stage at Reading last year (still on the BBC Youtube hopefully because they were mesmerising performances :) ), and they’re opening for Arctic Monkeys this summer in North America, which is where I’m hoping to see them again… but this time, playing to 16,000 people! I would totally recommend them as a live band! When I saw them, their guitarist decided the stage alone was too boring, and climbed up the speaker and vaulted onto the top to play directly to the balcony, all while pretty much playing his guitar parts.
(That’s him up there) Also, their singer Grian is the guy singing on the Leftfield song I think I also added to the playlist. It’s good fun, they’re a great band!
Actually these are all bands I would highly recommend seeing live if you can, we have some really good live bands right now! (I missed Nova Twins this autumn and I’m still regretting it… hopefully they come back this year!?)
Oh, and fun fact about Bob Vylan: they are totally independent. They run their own label, do their own press and distribution; when their album came out last year they spent the whole morning driving and shipping their records to shops across the country. And they made it into the top 40 albums!
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