CVC Tickets

On first listen, retro rockers CVC have more in common with the sunshine sounds of 1960s California than their rural origins in Church Village, South Wales. But that's because they’ve set themselves the ambition to write a story that traverses far beyond the local trappings that have shaped them so far. 

Named after the place they came together as friends, Church Village Collective, the six-piece band – made up of lead vocalist Francesco Orsi, guitarists David Bassey and Elliot Bradfield, keyboardist Daniel Jones, bassist Ben Thorne and Tom Fry on drums – fraternised over the likes of The Beatles and Supertramp before plying their trade in the Welsh capital of Cardiff. It’s there CVC honed their infectious, colourful psych-rock sound, whilst cultivating a fanbase and community around the city’s iconic venue Clwb Ifor Bach. 

To the local music scene, the 380-capacity venue is the gateway for success for budding musicians, and over the years has showcased major bands such as The Strokes and The Killers before they made it big. To put CVC’s hype and admiration in context, they played a sold-out show there back in 2019, before they’d even released an EP.

For any Welsh music aficionados out there, the surnames of guitarists David Bassey and Elliot Bradfield may strike a chord – they’re related to both the legendary Dame Shirley Bassey and a certain Manic Street Preacher. Though Bassey is a distant relative of Dame Shirley and has never met her, they intend to invite her on stage when they reach headliner status: “When we headline Reading one day, she can join us on stage to sing ‘Diamonds Are Forever’. It would be a belter.”

CVC’s path to get to the top began as The RagTag Wedding Band – who’d perform on-the-nose AC/DC covers like ‘It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock n' Roll’ – but it was their CVC alter ego that evolved with more intention. After several lineup changes and a steady circuit of local venues, the six-piece knuckled down to record their 2022 debut EP, Real to Reel. Despite murmurings of potential label deals, the band took their own fate by the scruff of the neck by forming their own label, CVC Recordings, to release their music. 

Stand-out performances at The Great Escape, Reading Festival, and TRNSMT came off the back of the EP’s acclaim, before the shimmering single ‘Sophie’ dropped in late 2022. Despite leaning more heavily into their bucolic reference points, CVC’s 2023 debut album Get Real showcased a slicker, more polished, and more flamboyant sound typified by tracks like the sun-soaked psych-pop of ‘Winston’ and the funk-indebted ‘Knock Knock’.

As CVC prepares for their 2023 Get Real tour which will see them perform in major cities like Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Brighton, Leeds, and London, they’ll be leaving behind the community that shaped them. Though the band are very much looking forward to the prospect of introducing themselves elsewhere. “We’ll always be indebted to Cardiff, but sometimes it’s nice to play gigs in cities where nobody knows you by your first name.” Just as well they’ve already sold out their homecoming show at Clwb Ifor Bach.