ADWAITH
Solas (Libertino)
The Welsh music scene is again in rude health, thanks to a number of talented bands in the past few years, the championing of Huw Stephens on 6 Music, plus the rescue packages offered to smaller gig venues across our towns and cities, enabling bands to find and grow their following. Mid-Walian Welsh-language trio Adwaith are riding the crest of the wave with third album Solas – meaning enlightenment – and what a doozy of a double it is, blending multiple influences from Heledd, Gwenllian and Hollie’s playlists and recording across the world. Think The Cure mixed with Pale Waves and Blur’s Think Tank.
Planed is an expansive opener, with its Middle Eastern strings, guitars and synths, which are again applied on surveillance song Wyt Ti Ar Y Lein and Y Ddawns. Mwy is a magnificent indie rave banger in anyone’s language, with addictive harmonies, Gofyn mixes slacker-hop era Beck with desert rock and a children’s choir, while Teimlo and Heddiw / Yfory are light and dark synth pop respectively.
Ti is a goofy lo-fi lounge song – the kind of indie tropicalia that Welsh indie bands do so well – and the melancholy Y Diwedd is thankfully not the end, ushering in new wave banger Coeden Anniben, the Elastica-ish Sain, Cocteaus with Harold Budd interlude Taliaris and the frenetic Purdan. Solas is very well sequenced and it’s rare to find a double album of sophisticated indie-pop, with such an abundance of earworms to the very end.
words CHRIS SEAL
