Marina And The Diamonds
The Family Jewels
679 Recordings
Shw’mae, RedHanded’s Jude Rogers here, your Swansea-born, wide-eyed new music guide for 2010. It’s a good time to start too, given there’s definitely something in the water in Wales this spring. Abergavenny’s usually known for its fancy food festival and being a hop-skip away from that country where they play rugby in white, not for producing Premiere League art-pop glamourpusses. My predecessor James tipped you off about 24-year-old Marina Diamandis last year, and now her debut album, The Family Jewels has become a Top 10 hit. It’s an intriguing hotch-potch of sparkly, punky pop, romping between the glam-rock stomp of Mowgli’s Road, and the kooky piano balladry of Obsessions and I Am Not A Robot. Diamandis comes across like a sexy, precocious Head Girl, and her theatrical voice might be a bit too much on the old lugs to begin with. But persevere – this girl has a way with a big, booming pop tune. Hollywood has a melody straight out of a classic early ‘80s songbook – while its lyrics also reference her likeness to Catherine Zeta Jones – while Girls tells us all “how it’s easy to be sleazy when you’ve got a dirty mind”. Pop thrills as well as OTT moments by the bucketful.

RACE HORSES
Goodbye Falkenburg
Fantastic Plastic
Aberystwyth’s charity shop-clobbered, bowl-haircutted Race Horses are fast becoming a great Welsh act to watch. They used to be Radio Luxembourg, a group whose sprightly, bilingual psychedelic pop carried on the great tradition of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci (whose frontman, Euros Childs, used to produce them). Their first album under the new regime bubbles with ramshackle charm, but there is more confidence this time round, and more finger-clicking moments: Cake and Cacen Mamgu are full of the loveliness of ’60s pop and skiffle, while Discopig and Intergalactic Space Rebellion crank the daftness up to 11. If you’re a fan of the Super Furry Animals’ oddball humour, you’ll lap this stuff up.

DETROIT SOCIAL CLUB
Kiss the Sun
Fiction
Imagine if Primal Scream had less cross-eyed swagger in their limbs and Kasabian had more heartfelt songs. Now listen to the debut from Newcastle’s Detroit Social Club, who write rabble-rousing festival hits-in-the-making – but with more heart and soul in the mix than beer-drizzled coolness. 2008’s single Rivers And Rainbows and Kiss The Sun which is currently available on a pre-album EP are both hands-in-the-air spiritual belters. And they’re a great band to catch live – watch out for details of their upcoming summer tour.

FRIGHTENED RABBIT
The Winter Of Mixed Drinks
Fatcat
From Selkirk in the Scottish Borders, Frightened Rabbit make bracing, folk-inspired rock songs go very much against their shy name. Written by frontman Scott Hutchison in the Scottish seaside village of Crail, their third album is packed full of charismatic stories about drinking sessions, loneliness, and the dark, forbidding sea – Things being the bravest, best opening track of an album this year.

The Wonders of Wales
That thing coming over the hill isn’t a monster, but it’s a pretty decent third album by Cardiff band The Automatic. Tear The Signs Down (Armoured) is a rockier, bolshier beast than 2008’s This Is A Fix, possibly because the band are now on their own label, controlling every chugging guitar and pounding drumbeat. Not exactly revolutionary stuff, but if singalong-in-the-terraces rants are your bag, this should tear up the ground at the Cardiff City and the Liberty. If you like your Welsh music more mellow and backcombed, try two reissues from Bonnie Tyler – 1979’s Diamond Cut and 1980’s Goodbye To The Island (Cherry Red). Made before she mainlined the hairspray and found international fame with Total Eclipse Of The Heart, they are less world-shaking classics, than gentle, mum-pleasing presents. Also watch out for Brittany-born, Cardiff-raised Katell Keinig, whose new album, At The Mermaid Parade (Honest Jons), is her first on Damon Albarn’s London-based label. She could be Wales’ next big export if her lovely, soft-breathed songs are given a push, although songs called World Of Sex and The Arsehole Song show us that there’s plenty of sly spark behind that sweetness.

Welcome to the hot seat our new reviewer Jude Rogers!