It might not be the most obvious story choice for a London-based act, but for Public Service Broadcasting, life in the Welsh Valleys around the time of the miners’ strikes is as relevant as ever. Laura K Williams digs a little deeper…
Released this month, Public Service Broadcasting’s third studio album, Every Valley, focuses on the history of the Welsh coal-mining industry up until the dark days of the mid-1980s.
“It’s a story about industrial decline,” says the band’s songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, J. Willgoose, Esq.
“It’s centred around coal mining in the UK, and in South Wales in particular, but it’s a story which has been repeated the world over and which has particularly striking resonances, given the current political climate. I wanted to do something a bit more tightly focused than The Race For Space, geographically, and something with a bit more of a human element.”
Asked what drove them to Wales in particular, he says: “I’m not sure I really know. I was aware of the British Film Institute’s mining archive, and that’s always a part of it, whether or not there’s material that we can have access to. When we did our first UK tour, we didn’t do a Cardiff date, and people in Cardiff went mad at us. I thought, ‘They’re already angry, what can we do to make it up to them?’”
Laura K Williams