Little Arrow

Reared in the wilds of St. Davids in Pembrokeshire, Little Arrow bottle up the spirit of their natural surroundings and transpose it into an edgy, grunge folk cocktail. Built around the delicately varied songwriting of William Hughes, their two LPs Music, Mask and Poems (2011) and Wild Wishes (2013) echo the sound of campfires on late-night beaches, stormy waves crashing against rocky coasts and a sense of ethereal yearning.

Following the end of Cardiff indie cult heroes, Frederick Stanley Star, Hughes spent a year ceaselessly writing and recording songs in West Wales. These acoustic templates have since been broadened with the arrival of Dan Messore (guitar), Ben Sharpe (guitar), Callum Duggan (bass) and Richard Chitty (drums). The resultant sound is one borne of the folk tradition, but with both feet firmly camped in more experimentally anthemic territories.

The carefully concocted, poetic alchemy of Little Arrow’s first two releases for Bubblewrap Collective gathered a range of critical plaudits culminating in their second album, Wild Wishes, receiving a nomination for the 2013 Welsh Music Prize. This has since been followed by their third LP, Furious Finite, released in October 2014.

Soon after, in July 2015, Little Arrow released their 4th album, Old Ink as a ‘return to roots’ acoustic album. The album was released both digitally and physically in the form of Zine. Built upon themes of loss, time and memory, Old Ink‘s 11 tracks were gathered from songwriting contributions across the band. Likewise, the 28-page zine itself also includes artwork by band members alongside submissions from a range of artists, designers, writers and illustrators each providing interpretations of Little Arrow’s ever-expanding songbook.

Little Arrow release their 4th album, Old Ink, on the 12th July 2015 through Bubblewrap Collective as a limited edition print Zine with digital download. Following on from the expansive, grunge-folk of last year’s Furious Finite, Old Ink sees the band return to the roots of acoustic music, tracing long-buried pathways in ancient soil. The resultant, relatively minimalist sound is comprised of plucked guitar, ukelele, percussion, bass and cello, with the soaringly powerful vocal of William Hughes in the foreground.