Feel free to call the Welsh-English band Swansea Sound one of the most exhilarating blasts of fresh ear to waft across the proverbial Pond since the pandemic. And feel free to call Swansea Sound a supergroup—although they’d have a hearty laugh at the term—seeing as how the band boasts members of such UK icons as Heavenly, the Pooh Sticks, Talulah Gosh, the Dentists, and Death in Vegas. And by all means feel free to call their recently released sophomore LP, the wondrously tuneful and wickedly smart Twentieth Century, the winner of the Great UK post-C86 Indie Pop Sweepstakes. But whatever you do, don’t call them twee.
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Swansea Sound bassist/guitarist and songwriter Rob Pursey (formerly of Talulah Gosh and Heavenly) and vocalist/keyboardist Amelia Fletcher (formerly of Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, and the Pooh Sticks) about the band, whose other members include Wales’ Hue Williams of Pooh Sticks fame, former Dentists guitarist Bob Collins, and Death in Vegas drummer Ian Button. Well also had the opportunity to discuss the bliss-enhancing properties of their new album. But before we got down to brass tacks, Fletcher and Pursey were more than happy to school me on the evil “twee” word.
Said Fletcher, “I think we’ve got used to it now. We didn’t like it at first because it was mainly used in the sense of fey and we thought we were really quite punk rock.” Added Pursey, “At the time it was a misogynist term. It pertained to women who didn’t like rock chicks or men who wore glasses and perhaps read books.” Fletcher went on to add, “In England it wouldn’t have become an acceptable term but in America it didn’t have as much of a negative aspect to it. People would say quite proudly that they liked twee and were twee and twee was their favorite kind of music. So it came back to the UK and it was like ‘Okay, we’re going to have to accept this’ because so many people were proud to be twee.’” And while they’ve hardly embraced the term, Swansea Sound have certainly had fun with it, even going so far as to print up “Riot Twee” t-shirts. I would kill for one, but they’ve long since sold out.
Accept it or not, I’ll refrain from using the term, largely because Swansea Sound aren’t in the least bit fey—the music they produce is a very melodic but often quite muscular species of punk rock. This is especially true of Twentieth Century, which packs more of a sonic wallop than their 2021 debut, the impossibly charming Live at the Rum Puncheon, which included such marvelously catchy and cuttingly ironic tunes as “Corporate Indie Band” and “Indies of the World” as well as the delightfully self-referential “The Pooh Sticks.”
Quipped Pursey of Twentieth Century’s tougher sound, “We burned our anoraks (the preferred UK term for parka, which doubles as a derogatory slang term for nerds of the sort who enjoy things like trainspotting and twee music) on the pyre of rock. Gave our offerings to the God of Rock. Yeah, it was partly because after the first album we actually met with Williams. I didn’t know Hue but I really liked the Pooh Sticks. So I was a fan. “At one point I wrote a song called “Angry Girl” and it was clearly too raucous for Centenary Wires, which was our band at the time. And I thought, ‘This sounds a bit Pooh Sticky’ so I ended up sending it to Hue.”
And we were all so bored (this was during the pandemic) we thought we would give it a go, and he sang the song into his phone in a cupboard in Wales. He then sent us the vocals and we mixed the song and it wound up on the first Swansea Sound record. We’ve always been DIY but that was proper back to DIY.” (How DIY? According to Pursey, Button made his contributions to the first LP on a typewriter with drum samples on it.) “This time,” said Pursey, “we used proper drums.” Added Amelia, “On the second album Hue actually came to our house and sang into a proper microphone.” “We weren’t in a proper studio,” added Rob, “but at least we were in the same building.”
A larger reason for Twentieth Century’s harder edge is the band finally got the opportunity to play live. Noted Pursey, “We played some gigs and we were quite loud. So when I wrote the songs for the second album, I think I had that in mind. We can play the songs from Twentieth Century live whereas we never had that luxury with the first album. We didn’t know when we’d meet because it was lockdown and we didn’t know what would happen next.”
Pursey went on to say, “As a kid I liked the things you’d expect but I also liked really heavy things. I liked Led Zeppelin and Killing Joke. But then I fell under the influence of this person (Fletcher) and I ended up enwrapped in an anorak for the rest of my life. So we rock and we do it quite thoroughly but we also have our tongue firmly in our cheek. We joke about putting our foot on the monitor, even if Hue will say his hip is too arthritic to actually do it. It’s really nice having songs that are really loud and that make you want to tap your foot. It’s good to bang your head.”
Fletcher also credited Williams with increasing their punk rock cred. “Hue is a natural rock star,” she told me. “It’s just in him somehow. In a way that I’m not.” Naturally I reassured her that she was indeed a rock star. “But,” she came back with, “he does rock. I think he really loves and appreciates rock iconography.”
Swansea Sound swiped their name from the much-loved Welsh radio station Swansea Sound, which changed its name to Greatest Hits Radio South Wales after being absorbed, consumed, and in general rendered toothless and bland after being purchased by the rapacious insect overlords at Bauer Radio—part of the Greatest Hits Radio network—in 2020, a phenomenon the band savages with Swiftian wit in Twentieth Century’s “Greatest Hit Radio.” Noted Fletcher with a laugh, “Because they changed the name and got rid of Swansea Sound, we thought we could steal the name for ourselves, like a hermit crab.”
And “Greatest Hits Radio” isn’t the only song on Twentieth Century that delves into the wretched results of venal capitalism and the human cost of its ruthless pursuit of maximum profits. Which makes perfect sense when one considers that Fletcher isn’t your average rocker—she also happens to be a noted economist who in 2020 was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her work in the field. Made it rather daunting to speak with her, frankly. For all I know CBEs are issued swords.
And while we’re on the subject of day jobs, Pursey abandoned a career in television, where he worked as a writer/script editor on various UK dramas and later ran a production company called Touchpaper TV, to return to his pursuit of the R&R dream. “I’ve lived my life upside down really,” he said. “I’m currently doing the things you are supposed to do when you are in your 20s.” As for Williams, post-Pooh Sticks he worked at the business end of the music industry, where his varied portfolio included acting as A&R guy for Catatonia, managing 60 Ft. Dolls as a sort of record company “Our Man in Wales,” where he signed the likes of Murry the Hump, Big Leaves, and Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi.
The origins of the band stretch back to the hazy mid-eighties, when Fletcher and fellow Talulah Gosh vocalist Elizabeth Price went in search of a bass player. Noted Pursey, “A mutual friend told Amelia he knew a bloke. So Amelia and Elizabeth came to inspect me in my room to see if I was suitable to play bass. And the main thing was that on my wall I had some record sleeves by Marcodisney and maybe the Fall and they thought ‘Oh he’s all right.’ So I didn’t have to audition. I simply had to demonstrate my good taste.” Several years later the Pooh Sticks would invite Fletcher to join them in the studio and at live shows, bringing Fletcher and Williams together. It would take the better part of a decade, but ultimately the trio would join forces and form Swansea Sound.
I then raised an ugly issue. I said, in a mock-accusatory manner, “This is a very thoughtful album. Its thematic concerns require one to think. Do you think that’s asking too much of your audience? I for one don’t like thinking.” There, I’d said it. I waited for them to apologize for making demands upon my feeble intelligence, but they weren’t biting. I even went so far as to say, tongue largely in cheek, “I feel like there ought to be a test at the end of it.” Replied Pursey, laughing, “Well if that’s the case I’m really proud of it.”
He then added, “I suppose what I would say is that the songs are loud and singable and danceable, and you can just enjoy them at that level. But I do think the lyrics are quite important because if they were just your standard punk rock lyrics it wouldn’t be as much fun. My personal feeling is that there should be no limit on the ambition of lyric writing. I think there are times where there are bits of the album that are dry and ironic. Take the title track. There’s a line that goes “Fight the powers that be,” which in a way is a sad echo of the revolutionary posturing in the seventies and eighties period by artists wearing bullet belts.”
“Did you have the Clash in mind when you wrote the song?” I asked. “Mainly,” said Pursey. “They were the first band that I really loved, so they had a huge impact on me. And it’s funny because looking back, part of them is in me but there’s also the knowledge of what became of them. And I felt this fact was best treated with irony. Because like a lot of people at that time I probably felt that if you wore camouflage trousers and a picture of a revolutionary leader on your t-shirt things would change. But of course they didn’t because it’s just a fashion choice. And so it’s about the strange effect of people like that on you. And they did have an effect on me.” Amelia chimed in, saying, “They may have changed a lot of people’s thinking. So they may have had an impact, but there are very, very reactionary and unpleasant people who will say ‘Oh yeah, I love the Clash!’.”
Said Pursey, “Same with Paul Weller. He still poses as someone with a revolutionary message but as far as I can tell ninety percent of his audience are reactionaries who just get off on the testosterone. They smell the testosterone but they don’t hear the lyrics. So it’s also about men. Because all of the artists referred to on the record are male and it’s about looking back at those men. On the other hand there are people on the record like Pete Shelley (of Buzzcocks fame) and Dan Treacy (Television Personalities), who introduced an element of sexual ambiguity or irony and worked at a level that went beyond sloganeering, which goes well with rock songs because you can stamp out the chorus and clap along. But it feels a bit hollow in retrospect.”
But he then added, “I should also say I learned more about politics from the Clash and the Gang of Four than I did from the newspapers. I learned about feminism from the Au Pairs. I was like a lot of other people—my beliefs and personality really were influenced by those people and those bands. So it’s kind of like taking the piss out of oneself.” Fletcher agreed, saying, “Despite the fact that we take the piss out of some of these bands, the fact that they made you think is actually what we’re doing again, now. The point of the lyrics really is to try to force people to think.”
Pursey’s right about the title track—its razor wit takes no prisoners when it comes to the punks who made their fortunes preaching revolution. It also, appropriately enough, happens to be the hardest-edged song on Twentieth Century. Williams plays the role of a long-in-the tooth, camo-clad rock ’n’ roll communard who opens the song on a defiant note (“I’m not a sell out/I’m not a turncoat/You’ll never buy me”) only to perform an abrupt volte face (“I/I want to sell out/The day that it comes out/Have a top 20 LP”).
The lyrics veer from braggadocio (“And you/You get to listen/Hear what you’ve been missing/Politically”) to an almost pathetic fear of irrelevance (“Are you still listening?/Are you still listening?/I’m still on the scene”). It also includes a very droll depiction of the hardships of waging rebellion in the rock’n’roll trenches (“We made tough videos in the rain/We strode through analogue terrain/Our clothes were black our amps were heavy/But were the population ready?”).
The chorus is unconscious self-mockery (“Come together/Fight the powers that be/Stormy weather/Painted all round me/We’re the sound of/The Twentieth century”), but perhaps the most telling vocals come from Fletcher, who sings in the background, “You can tell me, you can sell me, almost anything.” No one gets off easy on this one. Revolution was product, and the public was (and still are) buying. Thanks to that great Twentieth Century invention, MTV, the revolution was televised, and thanks to that wonderful Twenty-First century invention iTunes, it was digitized, but in the end the revolution was a sham. The politically oriented punk bands of the time crossed that treacherous analog terrain in vain, and it all seems so…quaint in retrospect.
“Greatest Hits Radio” takes a sarcasm-laced swipe at a real enemy of the people, and it’s a nice irony that the stations in the network most likely play (I’ve never listened) their revolutionary foes on regular rotation. The song has disco rock swagger (although I suspect Swansea Sound would object to the description), swings like Miley Cyrus’ wrecking ball and sounds very Twentieth Century indeed. The song’s overt subject, of course, is the hostile usurpation of the airwaves by corporate greedheads eager to homogenize the medium in the interest of improving the bottom line. They’ve eliminated the irksome human element (sings Williams, “We used real DJs once/It was enervating/Had taste, volubility/What waste/Now the songs can be/Chosen algorhythmically”). And sure enough, “the revenue rolls in.”
But then, and Pursey does this more than once over the course of the LP, he shifts the song’s perspective to a more distant past, putting things in a larger economic context. In this case he takes us back to the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century and slate baron W.E. Oakeley, who amassed obscene wealth thanks to his ownership of a mine in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales. Just as the owners of Twentieth Century Radio have “no need to do a thing,” so it was for Oakeley:
“It’s tough running a slate mine
But I don’t go under
Let kids
Break their backs all day
While I
Watch the trains go by
Watch my slate go by.”
Pursey provided some background. “The song was motivated by going to visit a place in Wales, a huge house which was owned by the Oakeley family, who became immensely wealthy as the owners of a slate mine, Wales being the only real source of slate anywhere in the world at that time. They had little kids underground all day, breaking their backs. And the Oakeley’s sat in this grand house which sat exactly halfway between the mine and the port, so they could sit and watch their wealth go trundling on railroad that ran close by. And in terms of the economics of it they’re very similar to what goes on with the people who own the coltan mines and those workers who are stuck in them in Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That song is saying nothing ever changes. We just push the problem further away.”
“The other thing I would say about that, and this is where art comes in, is Oakeley was very self-pitying because it wasn’t very fashionable to be living in North Wales because all the culture was happening in English cities. So he decided he needed to attract artists to his big pile, and to do that he re-landscaped the entire valley so that it was more picturesque. And in the smoky distance he built a fake village, so that he could attract picturesque artists, who were very popular at the time. He literally made the landscape look like the kind of art that was fashionable. So millions of pounds in today’s value that were generated by these poor sods in the slate mine were being spent re-landscaping an entire valley so some bloody artists could show up and paint it. It made me think about where artists and musicians, creative people, sit in the scheme of things. It’s often quite questionable. And what do you do about that? In our case we don’t put our songs on Spotify. It doesn’t make any difference, but there is an echo.”
The fact that many (but not all) of the songs on Twentieth Century seem to revolve around two linked ideas—the citizens of a Twenty-First Century dystopia fixated on the Twentieth, and the sad distance between what the citizens of the Twentieth Century expected the New Millennium to look like as opposed to what we’re living now, led me to ask Fletcher and Pursey if Twentieth Century was a concept album.
Replied Pursey, “Yeah, I suppose it is. I think once “Twentieth Century” was written it felt like that would be a good name for the album, because it talks a lot about how peoples’ ideas of the future in the seventies and eighties are funny to look back at. I was very amused at the futurists like Gary Numan and Thomas Dolby, who were excited about a coming digital age. They became very famous on the back of it, and Gary Numan obviously wrote some really great songs, which were also big pop songs, that celebrated his being an atomized individual in his little car who would never have to talk to anybody, and in that he was more prophetic than he perhaps realized. And this is what makes me laugh, is that here he was celebrating a digitized future as he saw it, then cut forward to the 2020s and he suddenly notices that all his songs are being streamed on Spotify and he’s not getting a single penny for it. So the digital future arrived and kicked him in the ass. The album explores the ironic distance between what people thought it would be, and how it turned out.”
That said, Pursey had qualms about the “concept album” label. “When you asked if it was a concept album I was slightly hesitating, because obviously it is a little bit. But it made me think of those rock opera kind of concept LPs, which I don’t like because I think that way of rock, or pop, which is sort of envious and aspiring to be high art, is always a bit grim and cheesy. Just be happy with what you’ve got. You’ve an amazing job. More people listen to you than go to the fucking opera, so just write some good songs. You don’t have to express your insecurity because you’re considered a popular artist, rather than a high artist. And I think that fits a lot of people in music, people who are very good songwriters but get frustrated that they’re not being treated with the respect that might be afforded to high art.” Added Fletcher, distancing Swansea Sound from the prima donnas, “We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
But let’s turn our attention to the album’s other songs. The chipper and very ironically titled “Paradise”—the choruses of which boast a very synthed-up eighties vibe—works on two levels. On one hand the song’s about alienation—Williams is a guy on a computer flirting with a woman he’ll never meet, and what’s more they both suspect that’s a good thing: “I love the way you talk/Straight into my head/‘We don’t have to meet’/That might be the best thing you said.” Atomized indeed. Meanwhile, the lyrics zoom out to articulate the steep human cost of his high-tech parody of romance—”Paradise got digitised/Lithium and cyanide/Servers hum and miners die.” Unlike the days of W.E. Oakeley, human suffering nowadays occurs at a morally dulling, anesthetic remove—we might not be able to live with ourselves otherwise. In the digital age, both romance and the barbaric exploitation of workers—many of them children—are abstractions. Don’t kiss, shut your eyes, and for God’s sake keep those servers humming.
On the short and furious blast of punk energy that is “Click It and Play” a similar scenario plays out in a simultaneously funny and sobering duet. Williams is a bloke at home buying his life essentials online (“Chia seeds and magazines/Box-set of Primal Scream/CDs by The Police/Don’t stand so close to me”) from harassed wage slave Fletcher, who’s a classic case of first-world exploitation (”Click it and pay,” goes the chorus, “Twelve hours a day”) and is beside herself because she can’t find one of the items Williams has requested (“They’re gonna downsize me/And my co-worker said/‘You just want to be free’.”). And the song itself goes out on a deeply ironic note, with both Williams and Fletcher singing the lyrics of another Police song: “Every step you take/Every move you make.” Which sounds to me like a savagely ironic commentary on the fact that Fletcher’s is being watched—her productivity is definitely the subject of corporate surveillance. Or maybe I’m over-thinking things. Two facts are self-evident—they’re both enamored with the music of the previous century. And they both have questionable taste in music.
“Punish the Young” is sung from the point of view of an over-the-hill (but immensely wealthy) rocker—we’ll name names in a moment—who simply can’t understand why the younger generation no longer views him as a revolutionary firebrand. He sits in his easy chair feeling massively sorry for himself because the young workers responsible for the upkeep of his country estate have all done a runner because he was paying them shit wages; they seem woefully unconcerned that our working class hero has a trout pond that needs maintaining. And all the while he curses today’s youth for failing to pay him his dues for play-acting at rebellion: “Don’t you want me/Any more?/Don’t you know that I/N-n-n-nearly swore/On the live TV?” The treacherous ingrates!
I pressed the duo to name names, grilled them in fact like they were suspected communists and I was Joseph McCarthy, but I needn’t have bothered—that stutter should have been a tip-off. Said Pursey, “There were a set of people. Roger Daltrey was the one that was in my mind. I’ve never liked the Who, I think they’re rubbish, but that’s just my personal taste. A lot of people love them, a lot of people I love love them, so what do I know? I think they’re sort of pompous, while other people don’t, and that would be that, but Daltrey became a very vocal proponent of Brexit [which is mentioned in the song]. He’s one of those people where the punk spirit, or in his case rock spirit, curdled into selfish individualism.
He says he was worried about his ‘freedom.’ Freedom to get planning permission to expand his farm, probably. Meanwhile, young bands are no longer able to tour Europe. The other thing about him (and people like him) is despite their wealth, fame and privilege they still manage to give off this air of self-pity. It’s true of a lot of right-wing libertarians. And that kind of self-pity, well, I don’t know where in the hell they find it. Probably because they’re not the radical, rock ’n’ roll voice anymore. They’ve become the establishment and they can’t cope with the idea that younger people might think of them as statues to be toppled rather than worshipped. They still see themselves as dangerous freedom fighters when the fact is they’re old and mainly preoccupied with their wealth.”
The surprisingly poignant and stutter-stepping “I Don’t Like Men in Uniform” starts on a low-key note before kicking into high gear—this one will satisfy your punk yen, guaranteed. Hue sings lead, Amelia provides lovely backing vocals, and it’s sung from the point of view of a fellow who’s spent his entire life fighting the authority figures he loathes. Problem is he’s tired—and feeling defanged. He had his reasons for being angry (“I was found in a paper sack/I was the gift that was given back/I try to overcome it/But I just cannot stomach/The cruelty of that”) and he still has his self-respect (“I’ve bitten more people/Than you could shake a stick at/I guess I’m still proud of that”) but now he just wants “somewhere to be warm.”
And he’s come to understand (and I love the understatement) that his chomping down on every foe in sight “was not ideal.” But in what I can only call a Vinyl District “You Heard It Here First!” Pursey revealed to me that the song is tribute of sorts to another biting angry rebel—namely “Hue’s dog Kenny, a very old Cairn terrier, who when he was young would chase police and bite them. Which was really great, but now he’s so old he just growls a bit and shuffles to the front door because he doesn’t have enough energy to bite them anymore…but he still hates them.” Fight the power, Hue’s dog Kenny. It will take a nation of millions to hold you back!
“Far Far Away” is a “love song” to the Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley, who Swansea Sound laud as “a true Twentieth Century hero.” It’s a nice slice of power pop, sung in the first person, and tells the story of an openly bi-sexual man (his gay anthem “Homosapien” was reportedly banned by the BBC for being too explicit, although it hardly sounds explicit to me) whose dream of liberation (“I felt it was so near”) has come to naught. Williams sings lead while Fletcher provides fetching backing vocals, and the lyrics capture both Shelley’s idealism (“Turned the anger into passion/Made excitement out of fear/Epiphanic one-note solos/Showed that heaven could be here”) and his weariness and sense of failure (“I thought I had time/I was out and proud and so straight talking/But I couldn’t believe it could be so hard/I’m tired of walking”). And the song ends on a truly heartbreaking note, with Williams singing, “Oh my love/I don’t know if you understand.”
“Keep Your Head On” is a humorous little duet about burgeoning night class romance—problem is the political keeps getting in the way of the foreplay. Williams and Fletcher swap lyrics, with Williams sounding smitten by the former’s cool indie look (“Short hair and two pound fifty glasses”) while Fletcher seems to want to keep things on a purely academic plane (“He seemed ok and not a stalker/I said ‘I just need to talk to anyone who fears we’re heading to dystopia’”). Williams replies, “Maybe we’re living there already/My sense of the future’s unsteady,” Fletcher concurs, and they both agree that they shouldn’t lose their heads because the forces pulling the strings “will do anything/To gaslight you.”
It’s an interesting double-whammy; the song’s title seems to simultaneously address the dangers of rashly jumping into the sack and the need to stay calm even though the powers-that-be are trying to put the wool over your eyes. Williams makes a stab at getting her to the pub (more conducive to intimacy than a cold room with peeling paint), but Fletcher has the cooler head: “Let’s get some further education/Before we try intoxication/Don’t lose faith, we might learn more than we bargained for.” That last line is freighted indeed—it hints at the possibility that the broken world they’re living in may be even worse than they imagine. As is made clear with the lines, “Cos they will do/Anything to turn the world on you/Make you feel like a serf, a fool.” Bottom line as last line? “We got to go back to school.” It’s perhaps the least sexy boy meets girl scenario in pop history, this one, but it’s both charming and quite funny.
“I Made a Work of Art” is a punchy punk song and quite possibly the only rock tune ever written about non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Williams opens the song with the lines, “I made a work of art/But I don’t wanna share it.” Which isn’t exactly true—the reality is he doesn’t want to share it with anyone but you, and at great cost, because basically you’re a sucker looking to be fleeced. “You’re the only one I’d sell it to/ You’re the paragon/Cos you/Will fall for my work of art.” All you have to do to get your hands on said masterpiece is pay what Fletcher called “silly money.” She added, “People were paying the equivalent of $500,000 in bitcoin for one file of a picture or a song.”
Pursey elaborated on the target audience, saying there’s a tremendous source of easy money to be made “if you’ve got a set of idiot fans who will buy anything you do, who would buy a fart if you could sell it.” Fletcher mentioned the Young British Artists; Damien Hirst’s name came up, with Pursey saying, “So far as I can tell, his biggest talent seems to be making money.” But he then added, “I was thinking more generally of musicians who thought they would be able to achieve works of art, by virtue of each work being artificially unique, thus aggrandizing themselves as ‘artists’ in the old-fashioned sense—as if they’d made an oil painting or something. But underlying that nostalgia for the status of ‘artist’ lurks the straightforward desire to make a financial killing.
I read recently that most NFTs are now basically worthless. It was a very successful con trick, if relatively short-lived. I was amused to see that Donald Trump squeezed more dollars out of his fans by selling NFTs of himself. Seems like a good epitaph for that particular form.” At which point Fletcher quipped, “We thought about releasing an NFT, obviously.” To which Pursey added, “We would make it unique by making sure there was one mistake in it. We would make it very special.”
Not all of the songs on the album are sugar-coated poison pills. Far from it. “Pack the Van” is a lovely ode to loading up the old Volkswagen bus and heading for the beach. “Maybe we’ll find the coast road/And where it turns to sand/The sky will still be gold/Still be gold” goes one very lovely lyrical snippet. But there’s a bittersweet feel to the song as well–a sense that all good things, youth in particular, must come to an end. Impermanence is the only permanent: “Keep hold of that image/Cos it may be the last time/You’re ever there/But we have to dream/And we still have lives to lead.” And who knows where life will take you? “Sing/Songs of tomorrow/Into the dark expanse of/Nobody knows” is one of the most achingly poetic lines on the album.
Swansea Sound also goes mobile on “Seven in the Car,” an infectious power pop number that has Williams and Fletcher singing in tandem (with Fletcher taking lead on several verses) about dressing up and heading off to see a band play. It’s all backwater town indie excitement and camaraderie:
“Seven in the car
But we’re not going far
It’s not a big town
There’s not much here
But there’s a place
Where we know every face
And we come see the Rosehips
Every year.”
But like “Pack Up the Van” the song turns on a dime at the end, with a note of loneliness and missed opportunity:
“Why did we spend so long
In the corners
In the darkness
Getting colder
Standing outside
Should be bolder
While the band played
I could have told her.”
As for the Rosehips, Fletcher said that while on tour they’ll substitute the name of a band that hailed from the town they’re playing. I can only hope that when they play Washington, DC (please play Washington, DC!) they’ll insert the name of my old band Lesbian Boy. It’s our only slim chance at immortality.
And then there’s “Markin’ It Down,” the best and funniest song ever written about hitting your local record store’s cut-out bins. Like the Pooh Sticks’ classic “On Tape” it drops band names galore, and like that song it exudes a dry, self-mocking wit. It proceeds in a nice low-fi shuffle and boasts a catchy chorus, and has Hue playing the customer and Fletcher the accommodating clerk who’s both happy to make recommendations and willing to cut prices to make the sale.
Williams insists he’s not a cheapskate but he is an adventurous fellow, and he’s eager to impress Fletcher with the fact that he’s in a band: “We do all our own material,” he brags, “except one track by Sonic Youth,” which I find utterly hilarious. As I do Fletcher’s response: “We just got a load of their old CDs in/No one really likes it in truth.” Take that, NYC’s most pretentious! But the lines I like best follow Williams’ request for suggestions: “You could try this single by Kleenex,” sings Fletcher, “Or maybe this old LP by Can/And here’s a battered copy of Grotesque/You look like a Fall kind of man.” She sure knows how to butter a guy up, she does.
I love Swansea Sound. They’re tuneful, smart, funny, and last but not least, nice. How nice? Fletcher told me with a laugh, “Part of Rob’s job is getting me and Hue to sing lyrics that he knows we’re going to be quite uncomfortable singing. Where we’re rude about things we actually like.” To which Pursey replied, “They’re the ones doing the singing and I’m the coward in the back playing the bass. That doesn’t reflect very well on me.” As for Twentieth Century, it’s one of those “love on first listen” albums that don’t have to grow on you but do anyway, and amongst the best LPs I’ve heard all year. Just don’t call it twee. Nice has its limits.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
