Royce Wood Junior - Penny Ballads (EP)
Royce Wood Junior Returns with “Penny Ballads”: A Miniature World of Future Funk and Alternative Soul.
Brighton’s own Royce Wood Junior, the Grammy and Mercury nominated musician, songwriter and producer, is back with Penny Ballads, a six track EP that lands somewhere between future funk, alt soul and eccentric indie artistry. Entirely self written and self produced, it’s a compact but wildly varied collection that shows just how many creative gears Wood can shift through.
The project pulls together recent singles including Go Get Your Money, a Poplife era burst of indie soul swagger, the double time jolt of future funk in Clean Up, and the low slung groove of Beretta featuring Lucey Way, all squelchy synths and sunshine soaked vocals. New cut Things is a mid tempo earworm with a hook that lodges itself instantly, while focus track Rolling closes the EP on a more reflective, folktronica leaning note, echoing the warmth of classic ’70s Stevie Wonder.
Wood frames the EP around the old tradition of “penny ballads”, cheaply printed songs sold in taverns centuries ago. “It strikes me that we’re in a similar phase in the way we value music in 2025,” he says, drawing a line between dog eared paper sheets and today’s ghost like digital streams. With that in mind, the EP embraces minimalism: single mic drum recordings, first or second takes, and a deliberately small, intimate feel. Lyrically, it turns its gaze to the oddities of being human on the edge of the AI era, culturally evolved yet still very much mammals muddling through.
A multi instrumentalist with collaborations spanning Disclosure, Jessie Ware, Olivia Dean, Joy Crookes and more, Wood has long been a quiet force in British music. Penny Ballads follows his previous albums The Ashen Tang (2015) and No Two Blue Ticks (2021), both of which garnered radio and press support from BBC tastemakers and beyond.
With Penny Ballads, he strips things back, leans into imperfection, and delivers something that feels both contemporary and timeless, a modern spin on the centuries old art of making songs for the moment.