A post bank holiday bottle-neck that needs unblocking, featuring two Welsh rarebits and some warm-reekin rich from Scotland.

Twm Morys & Gwyneth Glyn – Tocyn Unffordd I Lawenydd

Recordiau Sain

Possibly not the album title and artist names that are going first, or easily, to trip off the tongue of the anglophone majority, but this is worth surmounting your fears, or prejudices even, and biting the bullet. Twm Morys, should you not be familiar with him, that remark probably not aimed at the partisan readership of Y Fro Gymraeg, is a singer, poet and activist; a bard by any other name. Earlier acclaim came via his groundbreaking Welsh language folk rock group, Bob Delyn a’r Ebillion, even if accidental listeners had then found the out that Bob Delyn was not the translation of something or somebody(!) else. I caught the band at Bracknell Festival in the early ’90s, and was transfixed. Morys was their singer and main songwriter. Gwyneth Glyn is, similarly, both a poet and a singer.

Unashamedly retro, down to Morys’ never changing Dylan/Donovan style Breton mariner’s cap, the album is largely acoustic guitar and voices, with occasional harmonica and keyboards, a rhythm section on occasional hand. Oh, and some Welsh hornpipes, for good measure. And harp The songs are a mix of trad. arr. (or tradd) and their own, as well one from the unlikely hand of Ivor Novello.

The opener, Ffarwél I Blwy LLangywer, is an old song about leaving for Liverpool, fortune and fame, to which Morys adds a couple of new verses. I haven’t the foggiest as to what is actually said, the sleeve notes having little to glean for English speakers, but the mood and cautions are implicit from the gaunt delivery. Their two voices pair well, the arrangement sympathetic. As the next song starts, immediately the tune is familiar, being that of Lakes of Ponchartrain. It isn’t that song, tho’, it being a convenient fact that the metre is exactly that of a Welsh folk tune. So, rather than being the best cover version yet of the old standard, it isn’t, but the thought remains. Glorious pipe organ steadies the delivery.

The title track is a Morys original, sung by Gwyn, it becoming clear from the harmonica howl at the beginning, and the chuff chuff rhythm, that it is a train song. Some trumpet sneaks in for local atmosphere. Morys also wrote Cymru’n Un, with a cryptic reference to 2023’s National Eisteddfod, it sounding the oldest song here. He also supplies the tune for a poem by Hedd Wyn, the Welsh Wilfred Own perhaps the easiest way to describe this war poet, from Trawsfynydd. A line or two from Horace, half-remembered from my schoolday Latin lessons, are included as well. Irrespective, the combination, sung mainly by Gwyn, emerges somewhat Cohen-esque, as in Leonard. Jini is then Novello’s tune, Keep The Homefires Burning, if with words, sung unaccompanied, more to amplify the weight of the song before, Wyn having died on the first day of the battle of Passchendaele.

Coed sees Gwyn sing another updated set of words, this time to her own tune. Coed equates to trees or, maybe better, to roots. Harmonica, guitars, organ and drums add some emotive heft. Angharad Ar Y Degfed O Fai, or Angharad On The 10th Day Of May, which may or not coincide with the publication of this piece, is the song of a cuckoo to a daughter in Newcastle Upon Tyne, set to a Northumbrian melody. A simpler construction, it is charming, Morys’ harmonica and harp an appealing if atypical combination. Arfor, a harmonium drenched co-write, is the lament of a sailor, as he leaves behind his home, perhaps forever, his girl also behind him. The current of hiraeth proves the stronger, as the notes helpfully point out, however vaingloriously.

I am uncertain what Lauren Bacall has to do with Wales, but she was the inspiration behind Mae Dy Gariad D’yn Y FFair, whom Morys brushed shoulders with once, each passing in opposite directions. It’s more complicated than that, but the organ/harmonica melody is another gorgeous one. Finally, a further cuckoo song, a near chanted mantra from the tradition, verse swapping in an om like incantation, which, if zen equates to a relaxed state, free of worry, well, that’s a decent summation of this rather lovely record.

Here’s the title track, which, had you not worked it out already, means A One Way Ticket To Joy:

Gwyneth Glyn online: Website / X (formerly known as Twitter)

Twm Morys online: X (formerly known as Twitter) / Instagram

Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog – Mynd Â’r T’ŷ Am Dro’

Sbrigyn Ymborth

You spoil us, Mr Og, two in a row, to twist and trouble most tongues… Timing the reason, rather than anything else, this is album number six for these Welsh cowboys, the band based about the brothers Iwan, Aled and Dafydd Hughes. Iwan plays guitars and keyboards, Aled bass and Dafydd drums. Here they are joined by an additional five musicians, filling out the sound to allow further keys and guitars, including pedal steel. The latter comes from Euron Jones and Georgia Ruth Williams adds her vocals, each of these with burgeoning careers outside the band. Steel might suggest a country influence, but this music has more of a folk-rock feel than pure Americana; Cambriana, thus?

First off, Clawwd Eithin, sets perfectly the table for the feast, picked guitar and mandolin setting the scene for a combined sweep of steel and organ. As the vocals enter, Iwan Hughes, there is a pleasing faltering nature to them, the balance between the myriad instrumentation as broad as the spaces between. Williams has a richer tone that matches Hughes well. There is a guitar solo and a harmonica solo, with the organ set to swirl throughout. Pretty damned magnificent! The title track is next, which means, oddly, ‘taking the house for a walk’. A slow and slightly spiky clipped blues, I can only guess as to the meaning. (Not least when Iwan describes having a “burning passion for holiday homes”….) Here, the organ is positively spooky.

Defodau is a love song, a delicate wisp of a song. Just voice and guitar, bass slowly stepping in, ahead the gradual enrollment of the other players. Quite Blood On The Tracks Dylan, but with added steel. Wanting to preserve the memory of a good day is a thought common to all; describing it as ‘salt-curing the day’ is not a way I had thought to put it before. but that is what Halltu’r Dydd means, the song possessing a determined underground chug. All kosmische percussion and aggressive shards of guitar, with the latter more redolent of a late set at the Roundhouse, 1967, than lakeside at Bala. And, as you scratch your head at the diversity on show, it is back to a comforting earth with Adeydd, or Wings. This is a largely acoustic song, actually, also very Floydy too, if an album or so later, and altogether idyllic.

Trosul goes straight for the jangular, a Kinksy vibe inhabiting this one. The organ remains the focus, away from the vocals and another raw guitar solo. Magl then brings back steel and what sounds like vibes, for a song about driving home from hospital with your first born, a slow bubble of elation building up and bubbling over, as it progresses. The mood is characterized so well, any grasp of language unnecessary, with neat runs of bass in the arrangement.

The feel, style and arrangement of the opening song then gets a reprise, with steel, harmonica, organ and shared vocals. My favourite of their many musical shapes, here they appear at their composite best. This is a poem, Cyrraedd Glan, by Iwan Lloyd, set to a tune by Iwan Hughes and his wife. And, surely no coincidence, given the closer is a cover, guess who it is by? For, yes, it is that man again, Twm Morys, from the review above, a song from his Bob Delyn a’r Ebillion band, called Blodau Haearn Blodau Glo; Iron Flowers Coal Flowers. It starts like a long lost Neil Young epic, harmonica, clangingly jagged guitar and a frail vocal. That’s almost how it stays, bar a sequential layering of instrumentation. You might wish it not to end, I didn’t; a remarkable and surprising end of days for this record.

Here’s that evocative opener:

Cowbois Rhos Botwwnog online: Website / Facebook / X (formerly known as Twitter) / Instagram

Charlie Grey & Joseph Peach – A Breaking Sky

Braw Sailin’ Records

Anglophones can breathe again for this one, as there are no songs sung here in any Celtic tongues. Primarily as there are no songs here at all. This is a purely instrumental album, improvised at that. And don’t worry, none of yer free jazz skronk, as these accomplished musicians have such a grasp on the aural flavours of their Scottish tradition, as to have it pouring out of them. The titles of the tunes? Sure, they are in the Gaelic, by and large. You’ll pick it all up, eventually.

Grey and Peach we know, if better from other projects, such as their band, Westward The Light, whom we reviewed last year. This is their fifth release in duo format, fiddle and piano. Not just any fiddle, mind, this is Grey’s hardanger d’amore, a bespoke hardanger fiddle, the Norwegian sister to our better known version of things violinistic, a lighter beast with additional strings. It is able to transmit a mesmeric drone, as strings vibrate alongside the strings actually bowed, deepening the atmosphere and enriching the mood. To say Peach just plays the piano understates the notes he can conjure out of the instrument, and he has sufficient jazz and classical chops, sitting well alongside his more traditional grasp, so as to give most forms a run for their money, as when another of his projects, Gloriosa, performed at Celtic Connections this year.

“Forgoing pre-arranged compositions in favour of free improvisation, the Glasgow-based duo sought to capture the essence of their creative process in its purest form,” which I lift from the press, and it sounds altogether alarming, even with the earlier given reassurance. So it is a delight as Ho Rò Mo Nighean Donn eases itself out of the speakers on a billowy drone. This is impro as in Leveret, musicians who walk the walk and talk the talk with such fluency as to forgo sticking to any strictures of structure, with symmetry and alignment enough to build a castle in the sky. Or your ears. The track builds with discordant piano notes that nonetheless are the perfect bed for the fiddle. They juggle the spotlight and, in another place, it could be the music for a Malt Whisky “Experience”, as distillery tours are now called. Except there is a whole lot more thought around the direction of flow, avoidant of cliche, yet still honest to the tradition.

Lament For The Voice Of Glen Garry is clearly a lament, but the magic is how Peach’s piano never quite falls into the footprints offered by Grey. All a slow storm a’brewing, the music feels to mimic the overcast skies at Ardkinlas House, everpresent as the project was recorded, live. Sorley’s Slide starts with a piano figure for Grey to soar off from, which happens, if with utmost care. This certainly isn’t a celidh. It is fair to say the sombreness of mood isn’t going to go away, even with a title like S Maise An Dòchas (Hope Is Beautiful), which is certainly beautiful, if with a brittle austerity.

Aignish had me checking the notes, so convinced was I that a cello was being played. It wasn’t, and this air lingers in the ether, even as the notes drop away. (Yes, language can seem a bit silly and superfluous for the sounds here, but are all that is available…) Hoping a title translating as Dancing In The Air might afford just that, A’Mirean San Adhar, the sense of dance is assuredly there, if cerebral. something many a dysptaxic barndancer may be actually grateful for. Ghlinne Garadh has us back as Glen Garry, the melody and mood evocative of the day, early morning after the wake, after the lamenting, with a misty dawn rising over the loch. MacLeod Of Strathconnon follows, as a sidestep away, echoes of a ball in a baronial hall, the change in ambience a palate cleanser of some quality.

Oidche Challain is even within my grasp of the Gaelic, meaning, broadly, Hogmanay. Again, avoiding any Edinburgh NYE nonsense, this is a elegant set of stepping stones, from one year to the next. In that new year, Losgadh Chaisteal Tiotram already sounds momentous, that deep throated cello tone back to the fore. Castle Tioram was torched during the Jacobite uprisings, to prevent any strategic advantage to Cumberland’s forces, this tune commemorating that. The sense of foreboding hangs heavy, as a hint of the Wild Mountain Thyme, mixed in with Gershwin’s Summertime, vie for attention, neither taking away any of the focus. Fo Sgioball Nan Neul closes the album, taking us, much as it began, behind the veil of clouds, which is how it translates. It feels an appropriate place to leave, with the piano and fiddle at cross-purpose, Grey exercising a gavotte against Peach’s more courtly metronome, before coming together.

Is this folk, is this classical? New-age, even? Who knows. All I know is that it deserves a listen, more than any read about it. So, cut out this middle man, whilst I dance about architecture.

Here is S Maise an Dòchas, possibly just as it was recorded for the project:

Charlie Grey & Joseph Peach online: Website / Facebook / Instagram

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