New Single • The Grandfather Clock EP — out January 22, 2027. Cardiff, Wales, UK.

Cardiff quartet Slate connect the melodic drama of new-wave with post-punk intensity and a storytelling tradition informed by Welsh poetry. Following 2024’s Deathless, their second EP, The Grandfather Clock, explores childhood, family and identity through objects associated with a departed relative’s home. Recorded at London’s RAK and Perryvale studios with producer Richie Kennedy, it arrives through Brace Yourself Records in January. The title track, released on October 22, introduces that world through a deeply personal reflection on unconditional love.

The song develops through a slow-building arrangement, with an insistent rhythmic foundation giving way to enveloping distorted guitars. Its melodic hook provides a point of recognition within the mounting noise. That movement gives the track’s intimate subject an expansive emotional setting, allowing tenderness and force to occupy the same space.

Singer Jack Shephard explains that the song concerns appreciating unconditional love before taking it for granted. Its rocking horse, garden patch and pink marble elephants come from his grandfather’s house, making memory specific and tangible. My reading is that these details reveal how affection becomes embedded in familiar surroundings: objects once barely noticed acquire enormous significance when the person associated with them is gone.

Gothic music finds particular resonance in places where presence and absence overlap. A family home offers that tension through everyday details, with familiar rooms holding memories that outlast their occupants. Slate’s approach gives nostalgia an emotional consequence, asking what was understood and appreciated while there was still time.

The South Wales setting also makes the song’s identity inseparable from its story. Family, place and inheritance become material for contemporary post-punk, connecting cultural roots with immediate feeling. “The Grandfather Clock” makes remembrance an invitation to recognise the love that remains within reach.



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