To spend a weekend at Sŵn is to experience the tyranny of choice. When the rain comes on Saturday evening, hammering down from a previously benign sky, it’s possible to become soaked to the skin by the time you’ve decided which of Womanby Street’s venues will provide the best balance of shelter and tunes. Following a scaled-down, pandemic-conscious reintroduction last autumn, the festival of new music is back at full strength, with hundreds of bands playing throughout the Welsh capital in a headliner-free splurge of potential.
The only time the fun seems even vaguely curated is during Friday’s opening party at Tramshed, where Panic Shack are the standouts on a four-band bill. Familiar faces in the Cardiff scene, they stage a deliriously enjoyable 30-minute freakout that fuses thrashy early LA-style punk with choreography that owes something to the Go-Go’s and Iron Maiden all at once.
