Tangled Parrot

As record shops in tiny towns close their doors, Matt Davies’s shop on King Street, Carmarthen, west Wales, keeps going. A former punk who lived on a bus and worked on farms in his youth, Davies began selling records in 2001 in the town’s market, carrying his stock in an applebox. A few years later, Davies had his own ramshackle premises; in 2011, Tangled Parrot was named Wales’s best independent record shop, just as he was expanding the business to include the Parrot Music Bar and Café. Upstairs, shoppers can find CDs and vinyl from “the fringes of popular music” – Davies has succeeded, he says, by not competing with bigger chains – while bands and DJs play downstairs.