English-Welsh indie pop supergroup Swansea Sound do quite the tightrope walk. The band specializes in witty, hyper-intelligent punk-infused songs that will have you jumping around in sheer giddy pleasure. But, and this is where the tightrope gets very thin indeed, many of these very same songs address the human toll of rapacious capitalism. In short, Swansea Sound do the seemingly impossible—they produce scathingly sarcastic protest songs that will have you (to swipe an image from the Immortal Moz) dancing your legs down to your knees.
And Swansea Sound (they’re Hue Williams and Amelia Fletcher on vocals, Rob Pursey on bass, Ian Button on drums, and Bob Collins on guitar) pull it off with aplomb on their sophomore LP, 2023’s Twentieth Century. Its fetching blend of pop punk swagger and savage satire put it near the top of my year’s faves, which is hardly a surprise when one considers that the band includes members from such indie pop legends as the Pooh Sticks, Heavenly, and Talulah Gosh (to name just three). But it’s also quite the feat because I’ve always been a firm believer in the separation between Rock and State.
What’s more, Swansea Sound don’t just talk the talk—they take action. Why, they’ve just announced they’ll be auctioning off a one-off lathe cut of their very witty new single “Markin’ It Down,” perhaps the most huggable track from Twentieth Century, to raise money for striking Amazon workers in Coventry, England.
I reached out to Swansea Sound bassist Rob Pursey, who just happens to be one of the best songwriters in the rock biz (as well as a very kind and funny man) for comment, and here’s what he had to say about the band’s throwing in their lot with the Amazon strikers: “I write songs that often satirise the digital oligarchs who dominate our lives. Maybe that achieves something—maybe nothing more than a wry smile. But the Amazon workers who have the guts to join a union and take industrial action against one of the richest and most powerful companies on Earth are the ones who are really making a difference. It seemed right to use the proceeds from the auction to help support them, and to let other people know about their struggle.”
Let’s get down to brass tacks. Swansea Sound’s record label Skep Wax produced 100 black lathe-cut 7″ singles of “Markin’ It Down.” All have been pre-sold, apart from a few that will be exclusively available at Swansea record shop Tangled Parrot (it’s worth the trip!) and Rough Trade West on Record Store Day. But the good people of Swansea Sound also produced a one-of-a-kind, albino-unicorn-rare white copy for an auction that ends on April 20. (So hurry!) Proceeds, as mentioned, will go to the support fund for the intrepid Amazon workers in Coventry, so not only will you be getting a totally unique and indeed priceless artifact from a great band you’ll also be fighting the good fight against the rapacious bastards who sell me my books.
Who knows: the we’re-not-going-to-take-it Amazon employees of Coventry—which appropriately enough was home to Tom Mann, pioneering trade unionist and hero of the working man—could be the vanguard of a worldwide movement. And you’ll have helped! Done your bit for the revolution! And get this—you don’t even have to put in the winning bid for the great white wonder to do the union a large—you can still donate to the fund using the link below. It includes a really cool video, where the strikers explain what they’re doing and why.
You’re a good person, right? Or at the very least an altruist with ulterior motives (nothing wrong with that!)? And you love great music, right? So there you have it! Here’s your golden opportunity to fight the power while also getting something that NOBODY ELSE in the world has—a whiter-shade-of-pale, 1,000 percent unique copy of what is undoubtedly the greatest and funniest song ever written about doing what you like to do most—flip through the vinyl in the snug confines of your favorite used record store while the helpful clerk makes suggestions (“You could try this single by Kleenex/Or maybe this old LP by Can/And here’s a battered copy of Grotesque/You look like a Fall kind of man.”)
So reach for your wallet and put in your bid, and you could just end up owning perhaps the most precious object on Planet Earth, with the possible exception of John Oates’ mustache. You look like a Swansea Sound kind of person!
