Music
FOCUS Wales is ultimately about connections. It’s an event which for three days every year brings people together, from artists and music industry professionals to loyal fans and local passersby. But the effect spreads well beyond that short trio of days, and far beyond the centre of Wrexham where FOCUS Wales lives.
Into the North Wales melting pot go all kinds of ingredients: speed meetings, panel discussions and mixers hosted by diverse organisations including the Music Venue Trust, Marshall and the Irish Consulate, blend with solo acoustic performances and high energy canvas-covered gigs. Those moments of connection create ripples which spread through the local, national and international music ecosystem, and in particular the grassroots.
As you wander the streets of Wrexham looking for the FOCUS Wales and attempting to get your bearings in time to navigate the packed schedule, venues seem to pop into being before your eyes. Spend some time in those venues, and genre-focuses begin to emerge, and you realise how carefully and thoughtfully curated this showcase festival really is.
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The historic (and surprisingly narrow) Royal Oak pub played host to many solo performers, leaning towards folk and roots sounds. There, on Thursday, appeared a rich set from Daniel James McFadden, followed by Skinny Dyck, one of many Canadian performers in Wrexham this year. His was a relaxed, easygoing string of songs, infused with truth and humour and a strong sense of home.
Ceitidh Mac took over the afternoon bill, doing incredible things with delicately precise vocals, a cello, and foot percussion. She is one of a new generation of folk performers who write modern songs tied in with our unsettled zeitgeist, and perform with the gravitas that comes from ancient cadences and a focus on poetry. Her beautifully wending song ‘Bulldog’ became more of a chant while ‘Goldfinches’ conjured striking imagery. “I like to think of cello singing as its own genre – I love the bass frequencies,” she said, and later added the boldly poetic statement: “When people cook with the windows open it fills the world”.
Friday’s line-up included Lily Rae Grant, purveyor of soulful folk with rich expression beyond her 18 years. Her set was lazy, hazy and focused, and saw her use blues-rooted sounds as a means to express old and new themes; ‘Poison Ivy’ was melancholy, broad and expressive. Later that evening, fellow English singer-songwriter Toria Wooff took a moodier approach, leaning on her love for the Gothic and local ghost stories, yet with room for humour. “I’m from Bolton,” she announced, “and that’s why I sound like Fred Dibnah.” Wooff’s voice was perfectly suited for those darker folk sounds and heartfelt tales of timeless feeling – exemplified in the ancient-sounding ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’.
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FOCUS Wales’ de facto main stage, Llywyn Isaf, is a huge tent set in a grassy area creating a festival in miniature, complete with food stalls and portaloos. Before headliners FAT DOG performed on Thursday night, Lime Garden drew a crowd eager to see the buzz for themselves. The band delivered dream pop euphoria but with an appropriately crisp edge. They exuded impressive energy and a gutsy style of interaction, and the set, including their inter-song comments, was tight and straightforward. They simply played solid songs with aplomb and cool confidence, accepting that they’re here and well appreciated.
Another firm highlight in the big tent was Slate, a Welsh four-piece taking inspiration from their Celtic cousins over the Irish Sea. It was impossible not to hear strains of Fontaines DC in Slate’s lead vocal, yet elements from the land of Cymru lent their sound further firm intensity. Their opening song was a careful extension of their own spirits into the vast space, and was sung close and carefully. The band played with attention-grabbing dissonances at times, lending added interest.
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HWB is a smaller, teepee-style tent nearby. There, more traditional folk acts performed in front of large, communal wooden tables. On Friday afternoon, Eleanor Dunsdon & Gregor from Glasgow started their performance with a set of traditional Gaelic waulking songs before moving into original material, all accompanied with harp and softly brushed drums. With the lower notes on the harp sounding like a very funky bass guitar, their music took on a jazz edge, while the songs remained rooted in sea, land and weather as well as essential elements of humanity. The next day, another duo, Elin a Carys, demonstrated how traditional Welsh folk has a different kind of vibe: there are strains of Scottish and Irish familiarity, but also a warmer, richer rain-washed element. The beauty of the Welsh language also shone strong in this delicate and disarming performance.
The hub of much of FOCUS Wales is Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham’s brilliant arts and community centre (complete with some very generous food outlets). The building’s flexible performance spaces played host to many of the daytime conference sessions and were also venues for outstanding music sets by night. CLT DRP were memorable on Thursday: messy and loud but exhilarating – a focused kind of noise energy; on point and in the pocket; furious yet rich; and never raucous thanks to the mellifluous tone of lead singer Annie Dorrett’s voice and the full and viscous guitar sound generated by an incredible valve amp in the backline. At times, that guitar sound was warped beyond recognition (à la Nova Twins), at others the instrument was used to create awesome pushes of energy and then unexpected jitters of delay created rhythm from gaps of silence. Near the end of the set, the band gave the audience an opportunity to scream and release the pent up fury that surely all right thinking people must be feeling right now… A winning move.
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Friday night saw a punky, punchy and endearingly quirky set from Melanie Baker and her superbly together band. Melanie is a striking front person with a casual, confident and focused style – think Courtney Barnett with down-to-Earth English mannerisms. Her songs are well written and always take interesting directions – there’s genuine novelty in tunes such as ‘HAHA!’ (buzzy slacker punk energy), ‘Bored’ (laconic rage) and ‘Slugs’ (literally and apparently metaphorically about slugs in the cupboard, presented with a blazing force of thrumming sad guitars).
Just across the road sits Saith Seren, a community run pub and Welsh culture centre. Pony Girl played their third set of the festival here on Saturday afternoon and got it just right: not too weird but sufficiently eclectic and creative, helped hugely by their superb (jazz-trained) drummer and tight chemistry between the two front-people. The group effortlessly wove off-kilter rhythmic hits and vocal tics together in true musicianship, bringing in elements of lo-fi New York rock and 80s electro-pop. A clarinet genuinely added value and zest rather than feeling like a token ‘special’ instrument, while each song had its own distinct look and feel, from the auto-tuned, male/female vocal-led post-club ballad ‘Age of Anxious’, through to the extended jam of unreleased song ‘Fire’. When all the standing band members crouched down to give the drummer space for a well-deserved solo at the end of one song, that was the icing on the cake of their generosity. Pony Girl proved to be a superb live act, exuding sheer musical panache and just the right balance of innovation and solid music.
What a contrast at Wrexham’s most heart-stopping venue, St Giles Parish Church, with its soaring angel-bedecked ceiling, ornate organ pipes and dusky side chapels. On Thursday, Tristwych Y Fenywod made effective use of the lengthy reverb as they plumbed the depths of consciousness with their mystic synth vibes. Cerys Hafana closed the venue’s line-up on Saturday at nightfall, showcasing her surprisingly delicate vocals as she sang lilting tunes with harp accompaniment. Softly beaten drums gave her music a full and engaging sound, while the resonant, muted stridency of a clarinet completed the woven tapestry of sound. Her performance of a Welsh May carol with its haunting solo vocal line was a standout moment, leaving behind a wash of sonic emotion and memory.
Hope Street Church sits at the other end of the denominational spectrum: a modern space with exposed pipes in the ceilings and barista-made coffee in the foyer. Friday’s highlight here was Su San, who brought dark pop from Malaysia. “I’m early to my own wake,” she sang, delivering a commentary on the challenges of culture set to soundscapes with an edge, infused with effects and covered by floaty but forceful vocals. Other tracks went harder, with jagged industrial elements and a cavernous feel, delivering rage channelled into rhythm and dramatic high-register vocals.
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Late on Saturday afternoon, the church hosted spoken word artist Internet Fatigue who set their poetry to smooth liquid beats and dramatic ambiences. Despite their supremely laid-back presence, they were clearly thrilled to be delivering their thoughtful lines and cuing-up well-designed beats.
Singer-songwriter Naomi Campbell followed on, performing warm, beautifully structured songs which pleasingly combined Irish roots and US roots-derived guitar twang – the result being songs painted with warm colours. Charlotte Carpenter, performing solo, then delivered a precisely-weighted set, her voice precise and her dry humour on point, too. Female robot songs featured disproportionately, and post-apocalyptic love ballad ‘You’re The Reason Why’ stood out as something singularly beautiful, an emotive song composed with deliberate care and affection.
Pub venue The Parish provided an enjoyably cramped space for guitar-forward music, including Nottingham’s Vona Vella and Canada’s Bitterfly. Here, English duo Super Market chose to embrace the irritating, tearing up any conventions of being cool enough to rap or tuneful enough to sing. Their slacker-in-a-business-suit aesthetic wore on some of the audience but there’s undeniably value in their tongue-in-cheek rebellion.
A few doors up the hill, Old No.7 Bar provided an inches-high stage where Freyja Elsy delivered a set which was harmonic and sweeping, lush and cinematic, showing a brighter side to her alt-pop genre – something more starlit. The next day, Hannah Green blended lengthened vocal tones with guitar harmonics. She is a soulful, hazy, dreamy singer able to produce a pure sound deserving of a more reverent atmosphere (sadly, several loud and socially unaware voices in the bar blocked some of that purity).
A similar challenge faced Martha O’Brien when she performed at The Fat Boar, the problem coming from the fact that the stage was set in the lower garden area of this large pub which continued to provide many patrons with hearty meals and copious pints. Despite her set being punctuated by the sound of order numbers cried by hard-pressed wait staff (“Four One Seven!!”) it was a solid one, led by Martha from behind an acoustic guitar as she placed her words precisely and exercised careful volume control. Perhaps her kind of Western-edged indie music is well suited for this environment, after all.
Two of Wrexham key music and club venues were part of the FOCUS Wales trail. Penny Black featured WRKHOUSE on Friday night, their intensely throbby bass meeting euphoric sweeps of guitar and passionate vocals. Saturday’s highlight was six-piece Welsh-language act Breichiau Hir. They are purveyors of a loud but sweeping sound, the kind which forces the very molecules of air away as they veer from deep anguish to celebration. Bursts of half-time drumming and angular chords bring intricacy to their sound, tempering the three-guitar onslaught.
Meanwhile, Deer Hoof closed the proceedings at The Rockin’ Chair on Thursday night. Theirs is the kind of music that sounds like it is about to collapse; a near disaster constantly kept in check by pure skill and a touch of mania. The band’s balance of clever dischords and arhythmic approach was perhaps lost slightly in the warehouse-like space: this kind of music takes a considerable amount of patience and commitment which not every late-night attendee had, but the singalong of the line “I can’t have it, the monster rabbit” went well in the circumstances.
On Friday, Holy Coves delivered medium-heavy and guitar music, with something Druidic and bard-like glowing through their darker, rich chords. Theirs is a sound born of dark slate hills, green coarse turf, and heather. In contrast, Half Happy performed alt-rock with a dreamy topping, ‘Bloom’ emerging as a standout song with its keyboard arpeggios, open chords and build up to every chorus. The fact that the band had to find a guest bassist as their regular player could not get out of work to come to Wrexham said a lot about trying to make it in music in 2026.
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Slow Life, Gwenno and YARD also drew crowds that night, with The Bug Club and Moonchild Sanelly demonstrating the diversity of the line up on Saturday. But it was Hana Lili who made memories at The Rockin’ Chair that night in what felt like a homecoming performance. Hers was a sweaty, energetic set, led from the front as she moshed, jumped and high-kicked across the stage. Her pop-punk ‘Iconic’ was upbeat and forceful, with 90s-inspired rock ballad ‘Complicated’ offering an emotive contrast. Hana closed with high-energy banger ‘Sick of Myself’, asking the crowd to clear a space for a female-only moshpit, a great and respectful touch to end a show which boldly and firmly exemplified the FOCUS Wales spirit.
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FOCUS Wales will return on 6, 7 and 8 May 2027. Tickets are already on sale here.
Words: Phil Taylor
Main Photo: Brent Jones
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