Blaenavon are all dreamboats, are you jelly?
we’ve taken our time about it, because now we’ve made something that’s very broad and diverse and rich, with lots of different sentiments and emotions,” he says. The trio ended the writing sessions for their upcoming LP with over a hundred songs in the mix. Ben says those that made the final cut did so because they make “a nice emotional journey. Every song has a characteristic that I feel sincerely dedicated to, and the album’s a really nice journey that you swim through.” “‘Swans’, a song on the record, was written back in 2011 when I was basically a child,” he explains, “and it’s refreshing to revisit my old songwriting and see that it wasn’t hiding behind any kind of barriers. I don’t want to do my former self any disservice by revisiting these songs and re-writing every lyric, which is strange because it’s what some of my idols have done.” He cites an old demo tape of Elliott Smith’s, with identical melodies and structure to his later, most successful songs, but with vastly different lyrics. “Maybe I’ll end up doing that too, one day,” he wonders, “but for now, I wanted to be faithful to the way I was feeling when I originally wrote these songs five years ago.” New singles ‘Let’s Pray’ and ‘My Bark Is Your Bite’ show Blaenavon as a band constantly adapting and evolving, and Ben consistently refers to the album as a “trip” and a “journey”, front loaded with sugary indie pop, revealing a darker, more twisted side in its second half. “It was a deliberate decision to be bolder and darker,” he says. That said, repeating the phrase “let’s pray for death” over and over might be considered a bit overbearing. “I added in the lyric ‘pray for Ben my mopey friend’ to let a bit of light and humour in.” DIY
-SPLASH-O-METERe The band started while all three were still at school, juggling new tracks with exams, only getting serious once they’d left. e 2016’s festivals were massive for the band, drawing one of the biggest crowds of the weekend to Latitude’s Lake Stage. e With album one not even out yet, work on its follow-up is in full swing, with ninety(!) songs in the bag. 35