Made up of members of legendary bands like Talulah Gosh , Heavenly , and The Pooh Sticks , Swansea Sound are an indie pop lover's delight. Playing short, snappy songs that have the melodic sweetness of vintage indie and the prickly attitude of punk, the group take on fascism, consumerism, major-label rock, and streaming music sites, while also making some time for the occasional lopsided love song. After a series of ear catching singles beginning in 2020, their debut album Live At The Rum Puncheon was released in late 2021.

The band got its start when another band, The Catenary Wires, were stranded at home in 2020 due to the COVID-dictated lockdown. The group's Rob Pursey wrote a handful of songs he felt were too punky for Catenary Wires. He and fellow bandmate Amelia Fletcher thought their old friend Hue Williams, former vocalist of the Pooh Sticks, might like it. He did and they decided to record it, then follow up with a full album of songs in a similar vein. Working remotely, Pursey wrote the songs and recorded the guitars and bass, Wires' drummer Ian Button added drums (a mix of samples and live drum sounds) and Williams recorded his vocals in a cupboard on his phone. Fletcher's vocals were sung into real microphones during the process, Fay Hallam played the occasional keyboard, and members of the Portland band The Crystal Furs sang on a couple songs. The band first surfaced at the end of 2020 with the two-song cassette-only single "Corporate Indie Band"/"Angry Girl," then pulled off a stunt worthy of some of the tricks the Pooh Sticks pulled off by pressing up one copy of their December 2020 single "I Sold My Soul on Ebay," then selling it on said auction site for the princely sum of £400. Their third single, released in March of 2021, paired the similarly snarky "Corporate Indie Band" with a peppier, c86-style rocker titled "Je Ne Sais Quoi" and hit the UK Physical sales Top Ten. The group played their first live show at the Preston Pop Fest in August, then after the release of two more singles, their debut album, Live at the Rum Puncheon arrived. Containing all the singles, it was released by the pairing of Skep Wax (Pursey and Fletcher's label) and venerable U.S. indie HHBTM. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.