GWENNO / PATRICIA MORGAN | LIVE REVIEW
Ceredigion Museum, Aberystwyth, Sun 25 Mar
History is everywhere you turn today, and not just in the immediate surrounds of Aberystwyth’s magnificently refurbished, slightly creepy museum hall. Weird automata stand next to old cinema posters. Someone points out Welsh electronic pioneer Malcolm Neon is in front of you in the queue. And there is Patricia Morgan, a true hero as one part of deathless legends Datblygu, playing a miraculously rare solo set of Korg dreaminess and nervous giggles. It’s a very brief exploration of wordless, mostly beatless, synth burbles and squelches, but even in capsule form, it’s an elegant utopia with scattered streaks of sci-fi darkness. Much more of this in the future please.
Into this giddy matinee environment, of pre-schoolers in giant ear-protectors rolling around the floor, comes further celebration. Gwenno’s second album Le Kov, and the subsequent press rounds connected to it, show an artist with a welcome mix of bravery and defiance, intelligence and internationalism, and today’s gig shows you can throw serious shapes to it too. There are people here who speak no Cornish or Welsh (the languages of Gwenno’s records) but, helped by some excellent trilingual introductions, the sense always remains that these are songs about something, though the braininess never detracts from or overshadows the swooningly great pop music.
Of which there is a luxurious bathful: Tir Ha Mor hovers prismatically in the air, fittingly for a song about artist Peter Lanyon’s use of a glider to improve his landscape paintings. The full backing band emphasise the krautrocking architecture of older, luminescent bangers Patriarchaeth and Fratolish Hiang Perpeshki. And at the end, Eus Keus?, a list song, a chant song, a fists in the air show of anthemic strength. It’s about cheese. Only weirdos don’t like cheese.
It’s a masterclass in decadent, inclusive art and the people with grey hair are dancing as much as the toddlers. The queue for the merch table is a mile long. You’re in good hands.
words WILL STEEN photos CLAIRE VAUGHAN