Crowns are the cider-drenched young folk quartet from Launceston in Cornwall. Crowns is their first real long-ish release, which is full of character, woody pop songs and a whole heap of enthusiasm. They’re all living in London, but their roots are firmly in the Westcountry. If you like your folk with a dash of punk, Pogues and a crooked smile then you can’t do much better than Crowns. This new 6 track EP is released on their own Ship Wreckords imprint, and the release date is the same as St Piran’s Day (the celebration of Cornwall’s patron saint).

“Nothing scares the fight in me!” sings the deep troubadour who fronts the band on ‘Full Swing’. Crowns have a carnivalesque feel about them, you feel like they’re going to fall apart, but the songs are solid and tight full of melody and hooks. ‘Kissing Gates’ is a big favourite of Crowns fans, and rightly so. “There’s salt in the air and the view is great/but there’s no-one to kiss at the kissing gates”, a melancholy lyric in a seemingly upbeat song, this is undoubtably the highlight of their output. The next song to check out is ‘Whose Pint’s Whose?’ a celebration of that time when you’re sitting in a pub with your mates and you all forget which pint is which. ‘Hell or High Water’ is a fantastic love elegy bittersweet in sound and feel, gruff voice over buoyant drumming and more toe-tapping than the Pogues can inspire.

On the EP Crowns rarely change out of third gear, but on ‘Bodmin Town’ (a traditional Cornish song) they slow down, at least for a little bit.

Throughout the EP the guitar work is interesting and refreshing, and this song is great reflection of this. What seeps from them is energy, wild and untamed in a song-structure. “She Swears Like A Sailor”, contains some lovely wordplay and imagery (which is apparent and effective on the preceding songs), “She’s more than able to drink me under the table!” With the melodies and the gusto all shoved together this is a path which Crowns tread better than most.

You walked the cobbled streets of Cornwall with them, and sit down and drink with them and do the can-can with them. They mix the old, in Bodmin Town, with the new on this EP to great effect. Not forgetting their roots and sticking to a formula without getting stuck in a formula. This is exciting, refreshing stuff which has begun to get the attention it deserves. They’ve got some headlining gigs coming up along with a supporting slot for Sharks - another young British hotly-tipped punk outfit - so don’t miss them.