Slate are a young post-punk quartet from Cardiff barely out of their teens. With their love of poetry and epic widescreen sound, they could be the Welsh Fontaines D.C.
On Friday night I went to see a new band, Girl And Girl, at the Sebright Arms in Hackney. They were great but it was the support band, Slate, who really blew me away.
Slate are a Welsh quartet from Cardiff, barely out of their teens, and they only have two songs ‘out there’ as far as I can tell. This is their first, Tabernacl (and no that’s not a typo).
They sound astoundingly assured for a band that only formed at the end of 2021, and have clearly spent a great deal of time working on their sound – and their live performance – blending dissonance and melody.
When I was their age I was going to see bands who had literally first picked up an instrument a couple of weeks earlier, and it showed. The expertise of this lot shows too.
Jack Shepard is the perfect front man: one of those upstarts who may be second on the bill in the cellar of an East End pub but owns the stage as if he’s headlining Glastonbury.
Beside and behind him, drummer Raychi Bryant, starting off in a shirt and tie and ending up shirtless, is a one-man powerhouse; guitarist Elis Penri has the talent to switch from power chords to filigree embellishments without showing off; and bass player Lauren Edwards, with an expression somewhere between concentration and cool composure, adds dreamy vocal textures to her melody lines.
It’s Shepard, though, who commands attention, whether he’s up front – reciting fragments of poetry between songs like a latterday Jim Morrison – or at the piano, taking a breather from an intensely physical performance.
Like that other outstanding band of recent times, Dublin’s Fontaines D.C., Slate first bonded over poetry – the surrealism of Rimbaud (see also Patti Smith) and Welsh wordsmiths Dylan Thomas and R.S. Thomas, whose reverence for their country and its people bleeds into Slate’s lyrics, referencing nationality and patriotism in new single St Agatha.
This track, Tabernacl, was dreamed up after a long midnight drive through country lanes, echoed in its propulsive rhythm and Shepard’s dread-filled incantations, conjuring vivid images of black gates, tangling winds and hangdog streets.
They’ve come a long way since they played poetry games over pints in the pubs. Like the now well-established Fontaines, Slate have play with a supreme confidence in their own talents.
It’s well justified. And if you’re looking for reference points, there are elements of everyone from The Doors to The Sisters Of Mercy and Sonic Youth, The Cure and Joy Division. But most importantly, they sound like themselves.
Ones to watch… closely.