Welsh Wonders CVC Break Down Their Sound

CVC are a force to be reckoned with. Live, the Welsh band’s theatrical side comes out in a blaze of colour, their Freddie Mercury-esque bombast turning them into something irresistible.

On record, too, CVC are emphatically creative. Debut album ‘Get Real’ is out now, a punchy selection of classic tropes given a fresh overhaul – it puts us in mind of the Lemon Twigs in places, while having its own unique sound.

Currently playing a string of in-stores across the land, you can catch a headline date from CVC at London’s Camden Assembly on April 20th.

Ahead of this, Clash got CVC to break down their sound across five essential albums in Foundations.

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Supertramp – ‘Breakfast In America’

This was a big inspiration for the vocals. This album in particular has loads of lush layered vocal harmonies and background vocals which we’re all suckers for. We were saying things like, ‘could we put more harmonies on? Shall we add a bit more reverb?? Triple track them???’ 

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The Beatles – ‘The White Album’

This album was a massive inspiration in terms of the DIY feel, and the little snippets of half-songs in between the tracks. We’d record vocals takes and we’d always be ad-libbing some stuff either side and most of it ended up staying in after we’d be like ‘we got to keep that in, it’s real!’

Also the tracks on ‘The White Album’ and ‘Get Real’ span the genres, and at points we were thinking, ‘none of these songs sound the same’, but then the Beatles did it, so why can’t we? 

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Pink Floyd – ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’

this was a big influence in terms of us trying to make the record flow, and by blending tracks into each other like Good Morning Vietnam into Woman of Mine and Hail Mary into ‘Skeleton Dance’. [Skeleton Dance being the original name of the piece that finishes Hail Mary] 

Red Hot Chili Peppers – ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’

This directly influenced us to record the percussion for the album’s closing track ‘American Ultra’. After watching the documentary Funky Monks, we saw the band clanging loads of random scrap metal together to build the breakdown of ‘Breaking The Girl’.

We didn’t have a scrapyard nearby, but we did have some randoms things laying around Elliot’s house that we were hitting with forks, including bongs, plant pots, lightbulbs and cups.

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Dr. Dre – ‘The Chronic’

This album is full of non-musical interludes, and this makes the album feel like it’s happening right there and then… the laughter and glass-clanking make it a really intimate listening experience.

So, for example when somebody opened a squeaky door at the start of a take of Dave’s acoustic guitar in ‘Music Stuff’, we thought: ‘let’s keep that in, again, it’s real!’