New Music 2015 - Part 38 - Joanna Gruesome - Peanut Butter

More new music from Wales but that is just about where the comparisons with my last post end.
This music is not sung in Welsh and the nearest it gets to a harp is that the band's name is a parody of that of Californian alt-folk harpist Joanna Newsome; indeed one of the latter artist's songs could easily be as long as the whole ten-track LP 'Peanut Butter'.  Only one track on it reaches the three-minute mark.

The party-line, almost certainly an urban myth, is that the five-piece met as students in Cardiff at an anger-management meeting. Its truthfulness doesn't matter  - it something you want to believe and the music lends credence.
It also shows the remarkable diversity in music coming from Wales - and Joanna Gruesome won the 2014 Welsh Music Prize on the basis of début LP 'Twisted Sister'.
The most obvious comparison here, as it is also Cardiff based, is Los Campesinos. I would like to remind you of this, which I mentioned here way back in 2007. I believe that Laura Bryon is still active in the music of South Wales.

It also puts me much in mind of the C86 ethic adopted-and-adapted, from about 2004, by the late, lamented south-coast based Help She Can't Swim. They both share a tendency to music in short-message format - it may not be original, but hell it is fun.
This is the playlist for 'Peanut Butter':

1. Last Year 2:52
2. Jamie (Luvver) 1:41
3. Honestly Do Yr Worst 1:51
4. There Is No Function Stacy 1:58
5. Crayon 3:10
6. I Don't Wanna Relax 2:15
7. Jerome (Liar) 1:39
8. Separate Bedrooms 1:59
9. Psykick Espionage     2:08
10. Hey! I Wanna Be Yr Best Friend   2:01

It is already released on LP, CD and d/l on Fortuna POP! (UK), Slumberland (N. America).

Some bands take years agonising over a sprawling second LP. It has taken barely a year for this 22 minutes of condensed madness to arrive.
 'Last Year' is the introductory, and the second longest, track on the album.

Things That Happen When You Write Them Down

It's been a while, as someone said to me last week, so here is some new music from Wales that most will probably be unfamiliar with and the 5-track EP is available only on vinyl 7":

This is, as far as I know, the first full release of a solo recording by south Wales artist Laura Bryon amongst whose other projects is the band King Alexander, which has been mentioned here before, but while 'Despot Chic' was shouty punk this is an acoustic affair. The second track, 'The Trees They Do Grow High' is traditional while the others are self-penned and so was, I very much suspect, the artwork too. Released on Bird Records (07EGGS) this is an EP for lovers of the current nu/anti-folk resurgence. To buy it try Spillers Records in Cardiff or, to save a journey, click here instead. As the short review on their site says this is recommended to those who like the music of Cate Le Bon, and that is very true, but taking away the Welsh aspect (and none of this EP is sung in Welsh), another current point of reference would be Blue Roses.

Good Fortune Sounds - bad luck mouse.

Not big, quite clever? --- Despot Chic.

Maybe it is just a UK thing, maybe it is not, but "shouty-punk" is still something of a phenomenon and it comes in various guises - it can be angry, cajoling, or even surprisingly dispassionate - but all are still quite recognisable as "shouty-punk"...

This 2006, six-track, CD-R by South Wales band King Alexander remains one of my favourites in the genre and not only for the wonderfully un-punk sentiment of the lyric near the end of track 2, We Are A Good Egg:

Do you respect us?
Will you buy our T-shirts?

It smacks of capitalism but as King Alexander is still unsigned the band can hardly be said to have sold out and it might better be regarded as cheerful optimism, something they seem to have aplenty. It would also be easy (and very lazy indeed) to say that their music is not in fact particularly original but, even if that were true, it still manages to be surprisingly addictive listening as it is lyrically nothing if not tongue in cheek! The vocals are nominally shared between the somewhat laconic lads and Laura Bryon, who thus actually sings most of them.
She did the EP artwork too and is clearly something of a dilettante, in the older and strictly non-pejorative sense, and a busy one at that. A quick search shows that she has variously contributed songwriting, vocals and also guitar to a surprising variety of musical projects in South Wales in the last couple of years.