Blaenavon

Hailing not from the small Welsh town of their namesake but the leafy suburbs of Hampshire, the trio – aged between 16 and 17 – make tightly wound, instantly accessible alt-pop that soars in all the right places. Massively intuitive for such a young age, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re listening to a band three albums into their career. Oh, and there’s not a single navel gaze or reverb pedal in sight.

We caught up with Blaenavon fresh from signing with rising boutique label paradYse who are set to release the trio’s debut single ‘Into The Night’ next month. In this, their first published interview, the boys reveal their early influences, why they’d never be able to shake The Edge’s hand and why Beavers are “useless bastards”.

Hello Blaenavon. As far as we’re aware, this is your FIRST EVER INTERVIEW. As flattered as we are about this, it basically means that the world doesn’t know a single thing about you. Let’s rectify… Can you give us FIVE fascinating Blaenavon facts please?

Hello Line of Best Fit. We hate to accuse you of being ill-informed but this is our third interview. One was Portuguese and the other was discarded.

1. Our Dad used to want to be a King-Edward potato (A very grand type of potato)
2. Our Dad is from Pontypool.
3. Two of us and our mum are in the video for Take That’s smash single ‘The Flood’.
4. We’re all feminists and anarchists.
5. There are four of us in the band but one of us had to take the press photo.

How would you describe your sound to somebody who’d never heard you before?
ABD 2009.

You’ve just signed to paradYse, one of the most exciting new labels in the country. That’s pretty amazing. How did the whole thing come about?
Label owner Mike Hasselhoff (real name: Mike Harounoff - ed) came to all our early gigs and we used to hang out him and our manager Koso. We then met Tim (of Transgressive Records) and he insulted us a bit.

Cool story bro. Without playing the obvious “you’re all so ugly yet your music so advanced and mature” card, I’m fascinated by how focused and intelligent your songs are. How long did it take to ‘find the Blaenavon sound’ ?
It took about 2 years.

Fascinating. What music did you all grow up listening to?
The Proclaimers (until they got shit). Cardiacs. Free. MGMT. M.F DOOM, Achsel Wichsel…. Many a reckerd.

More ‘getting to know you’ questions…. Would you rather have a runny nose for the rest of your life, or constantly have the dust from a bag of Wotsits stuck to your fingers?
A runny nose can be taken care of with a tissue or flannel or something. You wouldn’t be able to shake The Edge’s hands with wotsit crunt everywhere.

I’m a big fan of emoticons. My favourite being the legendary ‘sup son’ ———–>¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Isn’t it great? If you could use just one emoticon to describe the sound of Blaenavon, what would it be and why.
>:|

“I’m quite upset about all that radiation that’s around.”

If the internet disappeared for a week, what would you do with all your free time?
There’s no internet in Pontypool anyway; I doubt anyone would notice. What do we do in our free time? Go to lessons, sit in the refectory for a bit, go to the cage, go back to the ref and then go home.

Who would win in a fight between a Badger and a Beaver. And WHY?
A badger. They don’t really feel fear and could easily chase away a wolf or tractor. Beavers are just useless bastards and wouldn’t be a problem, especially for a honey badger – they’re quite angry.

What does 2013 hold for Blaenavon?
Hopefully Josh Dalton will increase our fanbase some more and also get a bloody job or something. We’ll cook up some big bullshit and unleash it on the blogosphere when it’s ready. Frank’s new year’s resolution is to lose 10lbs, so we’ll see how that turns out.