Wales watching

Play it: Hooray for Wales: A playlist of Welsh Artists
Download: "Throw" Scritti Politti

Wales has a great music tradition, most people just aren't aware of it because many Welsh artists are mistaken as English. Artists like Tom Jones, Badfinger, John Cale, World Party, Super Furry Animals, Stereophonics, Mclusky, The Alarm, Shirley Bassey, and Scritti Politti represent a deep and diverse musical community for such an unassuming British Isle.

Speaking of Scritti Politti, they have a new album out over here called White Bread Black Beer on their old home Rough Trade. It's due to hit stateside July 25th (on Nonesuch.) Download: "Throw"

As far as travelling in Wales, what I found most interesting is that there's a freakin' castle at nearly every exit. I mean, we saw a lot of castles in Ireland, but this was a ridiculous wealth of ancient towers. In the town Hay-on-Wye, they have a castle that's a bookshop. Which begs the question - what do you do if you own a castle and there's three better and bigger one's down the road? Well, the one closest to where we stayed (Cwmdu) let sheep graze on the land, which I guess is appropriate, because if there's one thing that Wales has more of then castles, it's certainly sheep. We really loved Wales, specifically the area we stayed in the Brecon Beacons... it's mostly undiscovered by tourists and is both beautiful and full of great things to do outdoors.

tags: playlist, wales, tom jones, scritti politti, music, travel, hay-on-wye, brecon beacons