One of my favourite voices in rock music today is that of Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys. It's hard to put a finger on - it just sounds good to me, capable of both rocking out and being mellow and melancholic. This week saw the US release of his first solo album, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth. Written mostly in Welsh, it's a really fun listen, filled with the kind of quirky stuff his band is known for. It's definitely not as polished as an SFA album, but it continues their fine tradition of combining scruffy rock and electronics. I read some review that compared it to Damon Albarn's solo DemoCrazy - rough hewn and not really complete, and I don't agree. It's much more together than that. Caerffosiaeth is one of the more electro tunes, with a bumping old school beat and goofy sing song rhymes. A lot of fun. He also turns up on folk-tronic boffin Boom Bip's great new album Blue Eyed In The Red Room, handling vocals on the track Do's And Don'ts. It's a mellow, mid-tempo track that builds slowly into an uptempo rocker, and Gruff's voice is a very nice fit with the music.
2 comments:
This solo track is fantastic! Is the rest of his stuff similar to this?
There are a couple of other tracks like it - the rest of it is more rock oriented - scruffy, lo-fi rock with bits of electronic embellishment. I like it a lot.
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