New music review with singles from The Family Battenburg and SWELTR
Our weekly fix of the best new music as Julia Mason (aka The Decibel Decoder) brings us her new music review with singles from The Family Battenburg Fuzzy Features and SWELTR Hideaway
Artist: The Family Battenburg
Track: Fuzzy Features
Marking the final teaser from forthcoming debut album Super Deluxe, due 20 November via Stolen Body Records, Cardiff Garage-rock quartet The Family Battenberg explore supernatural sightings on new single Fuzzy Features.
Offering a widescreen re-production of one of the band’s earliest tracks, Fuzzy Features offers a full-circle moment for the band. A live staple honed across years of touring, which continues with a UK headline run this December, is captured here in full pomp: stomping glam-rock, moreish choruses, and rip-roaring, borderline ridiculous guitar solos.
Lyrically inspired by the mysterious sighting of the so called Mothman of West Virginia in the mid 60s, the track explores vocalist/guitarist’s Eliot Jones’ fascination with the supernatural, aliens, ghosts and the like, as he explains: “I’m obsessed with the cryptids of America, and Fuzzy Features is about the Mothman of West Virginia. We wanted to make a happy clappy T-Rex song, and it just proved itself live. We played it since the start of the band, it’s one of the first songs we’d ever recorded. It would be jarring if it wasn’t on the album now. The new version finally does justice for what the song is to us.”
Tracked live across a whirlwind 7-day session with producer Tom Rees (Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, The Bug Club, casual smart), upcoming debut album Super Deluxe sees The Family Battenberg distill their sound back to its ramalama essence. Seeking to capture a raucous live experience that has ushered in sold-out headlines, numerous showcase festival slots at SXSW, The Great Escape and Eurosonic; plus tours with Gruff Rhys, Panic Shack and longtime collaborators Getdown Services (Ben from the duo appears dressed as Elvis on the album’s cover), the band took this philosophy to its extremes: limiting their instrumentation to exactly what the band play with live, choosing everyone’s ‘shittier’ takes for the final edit.
The Family Battenburg Live Dates
December
2 - London, The George Tavern
3 - Southampton, The Joiners
4 - Carmarthen, CWRW
5 - Liverpool, The Jacaranda
8 - Birmingham, The Sunflower Lounge
9 - Leeds, Oporto
10 - Sheffield, Hallamshire Hotel
11 - Newport, Le Pub
12 - Manchester, The Abbey
* * *
Artist: SWELTR
Track: Hideaway
It’s always been part of the SWELTR ethos to put driving bass heavy guitar lines up against a thumping kick drum. On new single Hideaway the North Dublin duo, Tony Keyes on guitar and vocals and Noel Dempsey on drums, have produced one of their hardest hitting songs.
The track has already had a fairly loud introduction. In July 2025, SWELTR joined Nirvana Tribute at The Academy in Dublin to a full crowd. The room was dark, the air was hot and the lads were in their element. No introductions. The sticks began to click. One ... two ... three ... four ... BANG! Hideaway opened the set.
Strangely enough, the recorded version doesn't start with a bang at all. Gentle feedback and a wash of cymbals arrive first, followed by a three note guitar tone. It's tranquil, almost peaceful. Like the cinema curtains are opening. There's a feeling that something bigger is coming. And there it is, the riff arrives in full, cymbals crashing and guitar moving through a thick wall of sound. There is no holding back and there is very little time to settle before everything is stripped right back. The song finds a tight, bass heavy groove, the kick drum holding things together while the guitar gets to work around it. A steady beat underneath something much less steady.
“Did ya get so mean?” Tony asks in the first line. The question sits with the ways life changes us, often without warning and sometimes without our noticing. Work, lack of work, creative frustration, confusion, disappointment. The feeling of being “broken up by life's trials”. As if these feelings come in waves, sometimes taking us so far out from ourselves that we barely recognise the person staring back. Everyone has advice. Everyone has answers. But sometimes none of it resonates. SWELTR have captured these feelings in the first verse, something we have all felt at least once in our lives.
Then comes another question: “And what did ya say to me?” A babble in the mind. Was that someone else's voice, or was it your own? That kind of sharp criticism from one’s own mind can pull you further away from stability, until the noise in your head is every bit as loud as the music. Suddenly, the waves of chaos carry you back. Back to yourself. But for how long? How long does it take to understand what happened? The song doesn't rush to settle it. “Try for now, then figure it out”. Maybe that's all there is to do in the meantime. Try for now. Figure it out later. But how long is now?
The chorus throws us into a colourful rollercoaster of layered guitars and powerful drums. Each line seems to build towards something before the song returns to the root of it all. The first note and the first beat feel as though they've been heading for the last from the beginning.
“Close your eyes and get the picture” can be heard as an invitation to let go, to understand something by stepping away from it. Solitude, anger, life, death and everything in between. “Inhale deeper and feel the puncture” turns that thought inside out. Breathe to heal. But healing suggests that something was wounded in the first place. Those marks don't always disappear just because we learn to live with them. The final verse circles around acceptance. Acceptance of what exactly? Accepting life for what it is? Accepting the things you've already been through? Or accepting that you cannot keep pushing forever, that sometimes stopping and resting is part of moving forward?
The outro screams like a beacon of light down from the heavens, “I got away, I got away.” Which sounds like a glorious triumph of achieving peace, maybe even freedom from your woes. But did the problems disappear, or were they simply put away for now? Did we escape the world, or our own self deprecating thoughts?
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