by Glen Screeton
FROM school friendships and DIY CDs to melancholic guitar lines and festival ambitions, Belmont and The Stocks are ready to make their next move , so it was time to catch up with Sean over a midday pint at a local and discuss their progress since I put them on a bill back in May 2024!
There’s something reassuringly unpolished about Belmont and The Stocks and I have noticed this since they started. The Warrington four-piece of Sean (RG & LV), Tom (LG), Cerys (BG & BV) and Fin (Drums & BV) aren’t trying to manufacture a perfectly packaged indie-rock identity. Instead, they’ve built something looser and more personal – a sound Sean describes with humour as ‘soppy garage rock’.
I think it’s ‘bang on’ as their music can hit with the scrappy energy of garage rock and big guitars before suddenly giving way to something slower, a more mellow acoustic sound.
Looking back, the story began at St. Gregory’s High School, where Sean and drummer Fin formed the core of the project, with Tom joining on lead guitar and Cerys completing the current line-up on bass. Simple, local and personal and even the band’s name comes from their shared history- Belmont and The Stocks is taken from the road names where Sean and Fin lived. Sean says “the arrival of Cerys on bass proved to be a turning point” as before then, the band risked falling into the familiar territory of the indie boy sound. Cerys brought something different: a grounded presence, and another perspective on how the songs should work. (She does appear very composed and unflappable to be honest!). Sean mentioned “the band became less concerned with fitting into a particular scene and more interested in finding their own identity” which can’t have been easy as their influences are varied – Tom brings a love of ’70s music, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin alongside an interest in 80s synth-pop. Fin draws from prog rock and Linkin Park, while Cerys looks towards Fleetwood Mac, Phoebe Bridgers and softer female vocalists. Sean’s own influences stretch from The Velvet Underground to Kings of Leon and even classic rock which doesn’t surprise me at all – he shows a similar presence of that time and is a very likeable front man even when things go wrong! ( Music Fest – snapped strings, broken foot etc).
Moving on to the band’s discography, their communal approach to writing has already produced a small catalogue of songs that the band are keen to build upon and include the following:
‘Laid to Rest’ (Editors favourite) was their first complete song and remains a fixture of their live set and is included on their ‘Channel 90 for Love Songs’ EP along with ‘Decades’ -their most-streamed track, the Jilted John type lament ‘Your Car’, ‘Queen Of Hearts’ and ‘Muddy Shoes’ which has become a particular favourite for the band. Then there’s ‘Forget Me Not’, a quieter standalone single that emerged from a university project. It’s a cracking EP in my opinion and ok, their catalogue might still be relatively small, but each track represents a different stage in the band’s evolution and does show their diversity.
So, what’s next Sean?
After a short hiatus, the band are now focused on rebuilding their presence across the Warrington and Manchester live circuits and they are working on shorter singles designed to grab listeners quickly as the band are increasingly conscious of the importance of an immediate hook in the age of social media. They’re also continuing to produce physical CDs for gig sales, keeping one foot firmly in the DIY world while looking towards bigger opportunities. The ambition now is to take that momentum further and Belmont and The Stocks want to break into the festival circuit and ultimately land a televised performance – even if that means starting on the smaller, grassroots stages. It’s a sensible ambition for a band that has built its identity around local connections and DIY persistence, but Sean makes it clear “We’re not trying to skip straight to the top”, instead, they’re looking to establish themselves one venue, one single and one new listener at a time.
For a band whose name comes from two Warrington streets, there’s something fitting about that approach. Belmont and The Stocks aren’t pretending they’ve already arrived, they’re simply making sure the next place they stop feels like somewhere worth staying. Give them a listen on Spotify and all major streaming services now.
