Gruff Rhys might not be a household name (even in indie households, if there exist such things), but as a behind-the-scenes sort of eccentric, his skill for crafting psychedelic pop songs is rivaled only by Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips. As frontman for Wales’s finest band, Super Furry Animals (as well as earlier cult group Ffa Coffi Pawb), Rhys has spent the last two decades making music that can only truly be described as Gruff Rhys music. Combining psychedelia, folk, ambient, trip-hop, soul, and free jazz, Rhys is a bona fide renaissance man of indie music. With a knack for writing snappy pop tunes and a pleasantly husky, heavily Welsh-accented croon for a voice, I can’t imagine anyone hearing Rhys’s music and not enjoying it. Candylion, Rhys’s second solo album, is not so different from Super Furry Animals’ more recent material, except maybe being a little more laid-back. Featuring songs in English, Welsh, and Spanish, Candylion is a cutesy, quaint album that recalls Syd Barrett at his most delightfully whimsical. “Painting People Blue” is a wistful, waltz-like ballad that could sound just as fitting for a picnic in the sunshine or a walk through the snow. The track that best showcases Rhys’s diverse talents, however, is definitely the fourteen-minute prog-rock opus “Skylon!”. Layers of rollicking piano, pastoral folk flute, atonal strings and synthesizers, and fuzzy spoken-word samples build upon an insistent drum pattern that’s almost motorik-like in its consistency. It calls to mind the best British prog of the early 70’s, suggesting that Barclay James Harvest and the Strawbs might be cooler than you thought.
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