Meet casual smart: Cardiff’s Most Charming Indie Outsiders

Still firmly in their teens but already leaving a big footprint, casual smart are the kind of band that make you believe in the magic of first times. First crushes, first chords, first sweaty sell-outs – the Cardiff five-piece blend lo-fi anti-folk charm with soaring bedroom-rock ambition, the kind that’s already earned them nods from So Young, DIY, CLASH, and slots with Porridge Radio, Flip Top Head, and Green Man Festival.

Their new single ‘cranes’ is a dizzy, heart-spilling indie-rock ballad – all nerves and nostalgia, with a chorus that begs to be shouted from a teenage bedroom window. We caught up with the band to talk school friendships, sonic growing pains, and the weird thrill of being “Rapidly rising Indie Youths.”

‘cranes’ feels like a huge emotional swing — equal parts messy and euphoric. What was running through your heads when you wrote it, and how did you land on that massive, soaring sound?

Emily: We brought in this song a couple of days before the Porridge Radio tour kicked off, so it was pretty much a race to finish it off and work out what we were all playing. I think that made it different to our usual clean sound. We tried out different things and just played them, and it ended up being pretty cohesive.

Oliver: From the jump, we had a clear idea of how we wanted the drums to sound. Once we went over the melody a few times, we managed to make the drum beat and sax parts that make that refrain you hear at the intro feel so expansive.

So Young described your music as “the sound of love’s discovery” with all its weird highs and lows — do you think that sense of teenage emotional chaos is something you're trying to preserve or make sense of in your songwriting?

O: I think it just comes natural with the general events unfolding in our lives and our adolescence, I think it’ll leave just as naturally as it comes and it’s not something we actively aim for or aspire to sound like, but the songwriting process is definitely fuelled by those feelings and struggles that we face on an individual level and our becoming of them through music.

You’ve already packed out Clwb Ifor Bach and shared stages with the likes of Porridge Radio and Man/Woman/Chainsaw — what’s been the most surreal moment for you as a group of school friends suddenly getting this kind of attention?

E: For me, playing in Nottingham was the most surreal. It was our first time playing outside of Wales and our first show where no one in the crowd really knew us, and as soon as we stepped outside the venue, it started snowing. I slept so well that night, full of love for my bandmates, I think that’s when I knew that we’d be together for a long time.

There’s a distinct charm in how your songs feel both homegrown and ambitious — lo-fi but cinematic. Is that balance something you consciously work toward, or does it come naturally from how and where you record?

E: If you listen hard enough to either of our first two singles, you can probably hear cars going past outside or my mum chatting on the phone downstairs, that’s how dedicated we are to the lo-fi sound. It was never intentional, really; my lack of production skills and our old studio (my bedroom) shaped the sound of our first singles. For cranes, we were lucky enough to record at CWRW studios with Louis O’Hara, and you can hear the difference in the sound quality and production for sure. I think even just the way we write songs lends itself to lo fi no matter where we are. 

O: Louis definitely understands how we want to sound, and I’d attribute any kind of cinematic feel as a testament to his ability and encourage any new band to check the studio out. 

With a festival slot at Sŵn coming up, how are you shaping your live set? Are there any chaotic or surprising elements you’re planning to throw in, or is it all just riding the energy in the moment?

E: We tend to ride the energy a lot on gig days, changing melodies and even lyrics on the fly. We have been writing, though.

O: I think we’ll probably deliberate some kind of atmosphere for Sŵn, it’s already a slot that we're playing on home soil, and it isn’t our first time, those are two elements that will shape our live set, although I don’t think in a way that’s very surprising or chaotic. But who knows, the ‘cranes' outro is a bit of a curveball, after all.

ᐧ