The Darling Buds in September 2014, and two headline shows at London's Lexington in April 2015. The Darling Buds released the "Evergreen" EP, their first new material in 25 years, on Oddbox Records on 28 April 2017, and followed this up with a digital-only single, New Year, on 15 December 2018. The Darling Buds The Darling Buds are an alternative rock band from Newport, South Wales. The band formed in 1986 and were named after the H. E. Bates novel "The Darling Buds of May" – a title taken in turn, from the third line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18: "Rough winds do shake
H. E. Bates provided the inspiration for his stories. Bates was a great lover of the countryside and this was exemplified in two volumes of essays entitled "Through the Woods" and "Down the River". Both have been reprinted numerous times. He discarded his first novel, written when he was in his late teens, but his second, and the first one to be published, "The Two Sisters", was inspired by one of his midnight walks, which took him to the small village of Farndish. There, late at night, he saw a light burning in a cottage window and it was this that triggered the