At SXSW 2024 in Austin I had the pleasure of literally sitting down with Welsh experimental post-punk group HMS Morris for a chat. They’re not English folk dancers and, while the band isn’t a World War I-era British naval destroyer, they are shipmates on the stormy indie-music sea. Vocalist/guitarist Heledd Watkins, bassist/keyboardist/vocalizer Sam Roberts, guitarist Billy Morley, and drummer Iestyn [pronounced YES-tin] Huw Jones hail from the Land of Song – Wales. They’ve absorbed everything from Zappa and James Brown to the Beatles and British trash music-television pop. Many of their songs are written in Welsh, and their style is groovy and defies easy categorization. So, give a spin to their latest, Dollar Lizard Money Zombie, and report back to me with 250 words on why HMS Morris are your new favorite band.
This interview has been edited for length & clarity. I guarantee you’ll dig the full interview, available on our YouTube channel & at the end of this article, and you’ll be as charmed as I was.
360°Sound: So, what’s so bloody important that you would come all the way from fucking Wales to fucking Texas for this thing?
Heledd Watkins: Oh my God, I don’t even know. People from Wales have been coming to SXSW for a really long time. And they always come back saying that they’ve had a hell of a good time. And I don’t think we’re about to turn down ‘hell of a good time.’ So I think that’s why we’re here.
Sam Roberts: Absolutely. The guys at Focus Wales, Andy & Neal, have been coming here for years and putting on showcases. We’ve played Focus Wales loads of times; we’ve done trips abroad with them before. And they always refer to SX as the mothership, basically. It felt like time to give it a go.
Why is it important to you guys to communicate with music?
Heledd: We’ve all grown up with music surrounding us – especially in Wales. They call it ‘the land of song.’ That’s how I think I interpret myself best, is through music, and through the Welsh language as well – more than the English language. So being able to share that outside of Wales – our personality and how we live – is extremely important.
At the Focus Wales showcase, you guys really connected with the audience. What’s it like connecting with strangers through music?
Heledd: It’s easy to forget that an audience are human beings, especially in industry conferences like this. You think of them as, ‘Oh, they may be potential financial future for us.’ But when you remember that they’re human, that connection is really easy. The songs on this last album [Dollar Lizard Money Zombie] are about human connection. So that connection is actually quite easy, I think.
Sam: There’s so much other stuff going on with putting on a show. Getting to the place, learning all these songs, getting all the bits and bobs right, sorting out all your technology and stuff. But you’ve got to try and remember that, ultimately, your purpose is to try and connect with the people that are listening to you at that point, isn’t it? We’ve tried to build in little bits where we can go and have a little play with the audience and stuff, don’t we?
Billy Morley: At the end of the day, we’re putting on a show. We just want to make it as exciting as possible, and have a laugh doing it. Y’know, we’ve traveled thousands of miles with all of our best friends, and we’re doing what we love. And it’s a great laugh, isn’t it?
You guys are unique. We were trying to describe your sound, and I was kind of at a loss. What styles are you guys pulling in to create the music that you make?
Heledd: It becomes what it is because we’re all influenced by seriously different people. I grew up listening to loads of pop music on trash music-television. I think there’s a lot of pop in the music because of that. And then Sam grew up with, say, like Frank Zappa.
Sam: Yes. Zappa, Queen, and Beatles were my parents as people.
I get the Zappa thing. Yeah, I’m feeling that now.
Sam: Also, these days, you haven’t just got your limited record collection. We must be one of the first generations of musicians that can literally listen to everything, and probably have. It’s almost like the old ways of having genres and stuff doesn’t quite work in the same way anymore. You don’t grow up listening to such a narrow band of stuff as you used to, perhaps. Even though we may be fans of different stuff growing up, we can understand everyone else’s tastes more, perhaps because we also had a taste of it growing up as well.
Heledd, you talked about incorporating the Welsh language, as well as English. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
We all grew up with Welsh-speaking parents, and it feels really natural for us to write in Welsh. It’s not even a big deal; that’s the language we speak. So sometimes we form it. Sometimes we form in English, because we also grew up speaking English. I feel like sometimes in Wales, it’s made into a big deal. But actually, it’s just natural. We love the language. It’s a great language to sing in. And why not share it?
The first song that I heard of yours was “Balls,” and that incorporates the Welsh language. And then you’re like ‘balls to the wall!’ Tell me the story of that tune.
Heledd: That’s one of the latest ones that we wrote on [Dollar Lizard Money Zombie] that came out last year. It’s slightly about the whole networking thing as musicians and events like this. We’re expected to sell ourselves all the time. But as Welsh people we’re renowned for not being good at that. So, part of the song is about it being okay to blow your own horn, blow your own trumpet and pick yourself up. If you’ve got something you feel that’s good about yourself, sometimes it’s okay to shout it. Don’t be a knob about it, but talk about it. It’s okay.
So that’s ‘balls to the wall.’ Just go for it, pretty much.
Sam: Yeah, don’t be held back by your stresses and worries in that way, I guess, isn’t it? We just made a mad song with a minute of absolute carnage in the middle, because if you want to do that, do that, isn’t it? Go for it. Balls to the wall. Snap back in. Satisfying.
Billy I noticed you play a [Fender] Telecaster, and [Heledd] plays a Tele. What’s the deal with Telecasters?
Billy: I’m going to be straight with you, they’re hired gear from here. I didn’t have a choice. I do love a Tele, don’t get me wrong, but I’m a Jazzmaster guy when I’m at home. The only problem with a Tele is, I’m so skinny my ribcage pokes out, and it just smashes against me. So now I’ve got a huge bruise.
We won’t have you show that, but I believe it.
Heledd: We’re not normally Tele people. I play an Epiphone Crestwood. Which is a bizarre guitar from 1973. But I just choose guitars because I think they’re pretty – and it is. I do miss it a little bit, but that Tele’s quite nice as well.
Billy: It’s time to change.
Heledd: It’s time to spend all the money that I’m not making. [laughs]
Billy: Yeah, it’s thousands. Customs, if you’re listening, we haven’t made any money.
Sam, you bring a lot of fantastic sounds into the group, with the keyboards and the computer and your voice, of course. Is the beard magic?
Sam: It’s all in there. I’ve got to make sure that I trim it at least ten days before we perform, so it’s got a chance to grow back again, or there’s a severe diminishment in the performance level.
Heledd: I’ve seen that happen.
Sam: Strangely, actually, all that side of [electronic] stuff has grown pretty much in sync with my facial hair-growing era. I kicked off about age 15, probably. Moving from just straight piano and bass to starting to get computers involved and stuff like that. And then it’s continued pretty much on a steady progression.
Heledd: [motions to Sam’s beard] It’s like a network of cables, isn’t it?
Sam: Yeah, exactly. It’s mirroring the machine.
Iestyn, I like the angular style that you get in your rhythm. It reminds me of Talking Heads and Zappa. What are your influences that you’re bringing in?
Iestyn Huw Jones: We’ve all grown up in separate parts of Wales. So it’s nice that we all have our own musical bubbles that we’ve grown up with, and been influenced by different people. Mine is just all over the place. I love listening to country, folk and like, heavy stuff. I grew up playing in a lot of punk bands. A lot of Zappa drummers, you’ve got Steve Gadd – these really groovy players. That’s the main thing I try to bring in, is making the tunes groove, and if it’s time to go mental, it’s time to go mental. I think about Clyde Stubblefield, the James Brown guys. Vinnie, [Zappa drummer] Vinnie Colaiuta. And, like Sam, my facial hair comes into it too.
Heledd: Smooth.
Tell me a little bit about Wales that we should know about the country.
Billy: It’s wet.
Sam: It has the highest concentration of moss of any country, due to the humid conditions.
Billy: Most castles per square mile.
Sam: Of course we’ve been under the English yoke since about 1282-ish.
Iestyn: We have really got good scenery. Mountains. Good coastline. Good people.
Heledd: Good beaches.
Sam: It got big as a touristic destination in the Victorian era when their train lines opened; it opened up the country. But now they’ve all shut so there’s like these sad seaside towns.
Heledd: Transport’s quite dodgy.
Sam: Public transport is bad.
Heledd: Famous musicians. We’ve got Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones.
Iestyn: Pino Paladino. Gotta get him in there. Pino’s, our guy.
Heledd: Cate le Bon, more recently.
Billy: There’s so many. It just seems like a magical hub of musical wonderness.
Sam: If you want to be in a band growing up, you can definitely be in a band.
Iestyn: If there’s two or three people, those people can really shape who you are as a musician.
Heledd: You get bored in the mountains, and there’s nothing else to do. So you make music.
Billy: We all did music from a super-young age because there’s just nothing better to do.
I want to ask you about the name, because I looked it up. HMS Morris was a British destroyer in the First World War. Does that connect to you guys at all?
Heledd: No, absolutely not. The Morris name is my mother’s maiden name. And she was the last person to have that name, because there were no brothers, there were no men [scoffs]. So I thought, what a way to carry that name on, shove it on the band name and take it around the world. So that’s what that is.
The HMS side, I was slightly obsessed with the sea for a while. And the thought that being in a band just feels like a group of sailors on a boat riding a storm, because it feels like a storm. It did last night, trying to get on stage and a 15 minute changeover, trying to get your stuff off when there’s noise everywhere. I feel like we are sailors in a storm very often.
You can keep up with HMS Morris on their website hmsmorris.com
And on Instagram @hmsmorris
