By Carron Stacey, A Humdrum Mum

WHEN?: Monday 24 March 2025, tour runs through 3 August 2025

Friday saw the release of Welly’s debut album, Big in the Suburbs. Regular readers will know we have followed them since we “discovered” them at Victorious three years ago, and have been to many south coast gigs since, bought the t-shirts, met the mums/nans, interviewed them and now have even been responsible for a custom-made unlicenced Deere John t-shirt. 

• Read on for reasons including a Humdrum Mum interview with Welly about the new album

I have almost run out of things to say about them, how can I enthuse about them any more? Thankfully Welly, frontman himself, always give us an opening. This time, he gets on stage and announces he’s been in the local hospital all afternoon and yes, he has tonsilitis. And he did once play for Gosport United. 

That said, it doesn’t hinder a mini-album mostly-acoustic performance of many tracks from Big in the Suburbs. Track-wise, we already know eight of the 14 songs, the newest to us, The Roundabout Racehorse, being revealed live when we saw them in Heartbreakers in Southampton last month. We heard Shopping, Country Cousins, Life is a Motorway, It’s Not Like This in France and finishing up with Soak up the Culture. 

The venue, A Slice of Vinyl, is a really lovely record shop in Gosport in the High Street, and you can browse with a beer in your hand. This instore record launch and signing made for a very intimate gig. We certainly have watched all facets of their performances now, from late night stages and afternoon gigs at festivals to awesome homecoming gigs in Southampton. 

The queue is always good fun, waiting outside and then inside to get your album signed. I ended up being recognised by Melissa Thompson (named!) from Gosport College, who I met  a few years ago when she turned up to the Welly gig in full netball kit at Victorious. The band were so impressed that she’d brought the original bib with her and they signed it for her! 

We also met a bloke who bought Now That’s What I Call Music 11 on vinyl while we were there (the shop does a great pre-loved business too). It reminded him of his last year at primary school so I checked out the songs (Suedehead Morrissey, Mandinka Sinead O’Connor) and would’ve got to 1988 quickly enough had he not pointed out the release date at the bottom. Now where’s the fun in that?

Welly themselves said that they love the queues for these things as they have unintentionally tried to partner up people standing next to each other. monstagigz wonders whether we could monetize this idea… (watch this space).

This acoustic session really showed off the lyrics at their best, and it was great to see Welly play guitar himself. His voice, due to his illness possibly, was very much suited to a toned-down version. Joe’s guitar was perfect accompaniment and Hanna’s tambourine and melodica playing the best I’d ever seen! All in one breath!

Welly all always make time to speak to monstagigz and we had a great chat with them at the end. 

monstagigz: Just how much work does it take to translate these songs to play like this?

Welly: It’s obviously quite different to the way we usually do it because the band already know how to play the songs, but I’ve not played them on guitar apart from when I wrote them. I don’t sit around playing them every day like those guys do, so I’ve got to catch up with them to a degree. We will essentially run through the tracks as Joe and Hanna would usually play them and I try and fill in all the gaps on the big, loud acoustic. And as we go, we’ll stop and go Oh no Hanna, you double-time the tambourine here or Joe, you just play the bass line or just maybe play the top three strings. We just arrange it as we go through. I watched the Leonard Bernstein documentary, that may be putting way too much on it, making it sound far too lofty! We won’t go through the song and go Let’s try it like this. We’ll work through it 10 seconds at a time. 

monstagigz: We know from talking to Field Music last year in an interview at an instore/signing that it takes a lot of work to translate from a full band to just the two brothers playing acoustically and that they swap instruments as well, just to mix it up. I didn’t know how these (your) songs were going to translate and I think they did beautifully. I almost don’t want to hear them loud again as I really liked them. 

Welly: That means so much thank you. What’s interesting of course is that when I write them all, it is just me and an electric guitar. Especially the one Country Cousins, I think that one really translates well into an Oasis-y, singalong tune, so the fact that you think they translate well really means a lot. We’ll move a riff around on the melodica a bit. I remember an interview with Franz Ferdinand when they said you can’t be precious about your songs. A song should be able to survive being ripped out and covered in different genres. And the song will survive if it’s good enough, hopefully, when you dissect it and pull it apart – I try to do that when I’m writing it as well. Boil it down and boil it down and think right, if I just sing it and play it on the guitar, is it still catchy? So that’s my own criteria, so if that’s translated then that’s fantastic. 

monstagigz asks what else can we say about them?

Welly: I’m on my fourth Strepsil…

• Pictures via Facebook courtesy Welly and A Humdrum Mum. Tickets
• Read more from Carron at her blog A Humdrum Mum
• Have you seen any of these shows? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
• Enjoyed this review? Follow monstagigz on Twitter @NeilDurham, email neildurham3@gmail.com and check us out on Instagram and Facebook