All Pictures copyright Sara-Louise Bowrey
The UK/Canadian musical bond was tied ever tighter over the last week as three of Wales’ hottest rising stars played to fans and industry leaders in Montreal.
Newport’s L E M F R E C K, Myrthr Tydfill’s Kissy Crawford, and Teddy Hunter, who hails from Swansea, were selected from a huge long-list of potential artists to travel to Canada and represent their nation at the long-running M for Montreal showcase festival.
The trio were taken across the Atlantic by the team from FOCUS Wales, the annual Wrexham event established to put the focus firmly onto the wealth of bands and singers who are currently emerging from the country.
Speaking after one of the Montreal shows where all three performers had shown off their talents to bookers, record labels, and media from around the world, FOCUS Wales’ co-founder Neal Thompson told us: “There have always been strong ties between Canada and Wales, and this new partnership is a brilliant way of letting the two countries trade talent across the Atlantic ocean. We’ve been including Canadian acts in our own programme for a few years now, and this has been the first opportunity we’ve had to let Montreal return the favour and let Welsh bands and singers take the spotlight over here.”
Kizzy Crawford was the first to take the stage. She has been honing her one-woman show for ten years now and has fully mastered the art of the loop station at the same time as developing a range of songwriting and singing styles that deliver English and Welsh lyrics in dreamy and soulful or sometimes uniquely hip-hop formats.
One of the UK delegates at the festival, John Bownas, Editor of FestivalFlyer.com said: “Kizzy is definitely a star due to rise and we’d be baffled if we didn’t see her on some fairly major festival line-ups over the next year or two.”
Next up at the event (which had the added bonus of serving up a mountain of steaming Welsh Rarebit to keep the hungry fans happy) was another solo act, Teddy Hunter.
Teddy Hunter was representing Cardiff to the Canadian and international industry audience at M for Montreal and has come a long way (very literally) in the five years since her first Sofar Sounds gig in her hometown back in 2017.
Since then she’s played a good handful of support shows as well as her own headline dates – alongside a nice batch of festivals, including SWN, Green Man Rising, and of course Focus wales.
UK live music photographer Sara-Louise Bowrey was out in Canada to capture the action and said: “Teddy’s voice can only be described as dreamy, but nobody was falling asleep because her enthralling show held everyone transfixed.”
Last up was the chance to raise the tempo as the rapper known as L E M F R E C K took to the stage with his live backing band.
John Bownas was front and centre for the whole set and afterwards said: “There’s pretty much zero chance that if you’re out on the festival circuit over the next few years you won’t see L E M F R E C K on several bills. He’s been shortlisted for the Welsh Music Prize, and we can see why.”
Looking to the Canadian talent who made up the bulk of the festival we asked the Festival Flyer team to make a few predictions about bands from the land of the maple leaf who may well appear on some UK festival line-ups over the next year.
Here’s what they said:
The two-woman powerhouse called Mobina Galore are so hot on the heels of Green Day and Blink 182 that if they don’t appear on the Reading and Leeds stages something is wrong with the world.
Lumiere would be a total crowd pleaser at Latitude Festival or Camp Bestival. Imagine a front-man with the moves and grooves of Freddie Mecury and Marc Bolan. He may sing in French – but that simply doesn’t matter.
Speaking of language issues, you might think that songs sung in native Atikamekw might struggle to translate to an English audience. But take our word for it Laura Niquay has such a powerful voice she could be singing in Martian and it would still work to speakers of any tongue.
Fans of slightly avant garde guitar rock will immediately warm to Kamikaze Nurse, and if we were betting people we’d pick somewhere like Truck Festival as a natural home for this band.
Boomtown need to be the ones looking to book Barry Paquin Robarge – a feel-good collective of escapees from the 70s disco funk land that style forgot who will kick-start any party in milliseconds.
And then there’s our new favourite band – The Burning Hell. Hailing from Prince Edward Island this three-piece muti-instrumental band sing such well-observed songs that each one could as easily be put up for a Booker Prize as much as a Grammy. To be honest they would fit in anywhere, but for the sake of argument we’d favour seeing them at Blue Dot.
In other recommendations we could see the one-woman synth-goddess C’Est Karma absolutely nailing it at Creamfields, and Balaklava Blues’ polyphonic Ukrainian folk would go down a storm at Beautiful Days.
