I think every freelance journalist I know has one of these, so it seems appropriate that I should have one too. I love music journalism more than anything; it’s my passion through and through, but the more articles I write for other publications, the more I seem to lose my original style of writing that I had when I was just writing for myself. To be wholly honest, I’m still trying to work out what my style of writing is (along with a lot of other things), so hopefully, this can be a place for me to help develop that as well as giving me a place to ramble about whatever I so please.
I’ve never used this website before, so I don’t know if there’s an algorithm or whether this will only be seen by people close to me. Just in case, my name is Peter, and I live just outside of Cardiff. I mentioned briefly before, that I am a freelance music journalist for So Young and DIY magazine. My life has been forever tied to music in some way or another. I like to think I need music the same way I would need oxygen or water, but I think that’s quite naive of me to say. I’m writing this in March of 2025. Wales just lost to Scotland in the Rugby, and Cardiff lost to Sunderland in the football so it’s not been a great day sports-wise, and that’s left me feeling a bit upset generally. I’m also in a band called casual smart (in all lowercase) with 4 of my very close friends, which co-exists with all the writing stuff fairly nicely and is just a blessed experience all around. I’ve been successful already in my life. I’m 20 years old later this year, so I’m still young in the grand scheme of things, but I have been majorly struggling with some kind of imposter syndrome along with lots of burdens that I feel are tied into generally growing up. It’s not been the nicest of years for my mental health, I can’t lie, but I’m blessed to be surrounded by lots of great people. Sorry if that already is TMI, but I want to work on expressing myself more with this Substack, and being honest from the jump will help make a lot of these pieces into context better.
My favourite band ever is Black Country, New Road, whom I first saw when I was 16 years old. People talk about live shows being this “out of body experience”, and even though I‘ve always liked that phrase, I know half of the time it’s exaggerated. But the first time I saw Black Country, I cried for 2 hours afterwards. If you know the band you might think that isn’t an uncommon thing to happen upon seeing them live, but I wasn’t crying out of emotional attachment to the lyrics (to be frank, I couldn’t hear much of them anyways; the sound wasn’t fantastic!), to be honest I’m not sure why I was crying that hard for that long. The answer I have in my head currently is that I fell in love with the band that night. I’d never been so influenced emotionally by anything like them before, the way they communicated with each other instrumentally on stage to the lyricism (what I heard at least) that commented on modern culture with existence and honestly just impressed at how well all members could play their instruments. I thought there and then I would never feel that way about a performance, gig, song or anything like I did seeing them at the Far Out stage at Green Man festival, but hell I wanted too! I started going to my local grassroots music venues and absorbing the live scene, started listening to as much music possible in any similar vain to them and found friends who shared that interest of music in the same way I did. From there, my life as it is today panned out, and I would love to credit those post-BCNR tears to falling in love with living. The tears might have been from the fact I was quite high during it, but hey, we’re going with the first option! I’ve seen them 5 times now and recently did an article on their latest single for So Young, which, to me, is the perfect full circle moment. This is a very cliche thing to say but fuck, I want to tell my stoned 16 year old crying self that I’ve come this far because I am proud of what I’ve done. I am guilty of undermining my accomplishments, but I worked so very hard for this, and I’m proud of myself.
That’s my introduction, I think. Sorry I was overboard and probably way too personal at points, but this is what to expect going forward. I’ll leave a song recommendation at the end of all of these because it’s my Substack, and I make the fucking rules. (Now I’ve sworn a few times in this article I am feeling the urge to do so lots sorry) I’m loving “Wonder” by Lomelda at the moment. It’s getting me through shit generally, but I also love the way the drums sound throughout this record. Okay, that’s me done!