As ever with Plant Duw, melodies are strong and often take the lead role in dictating the track’s direction; and there are opalescent moments throughout…
As ever with Plant Duw, melodies are strong and often take the lead role in dictating the track’s direction; and there are opalescent moments throughout…
An absolutely beautiful EP is LLIWIAU, and one that contrasts well with their rockier stuff; though second track COB does skip about to some extent. But overall it’s fair to say that this is a soft, soulful release; one that rests a lot of emphasis on the magic created between the carefully enunciated vocal lines, the brass punches and the rustling homespun rhythms. A track like CANNWYLL is as good as any to explain what’s going on: the sound is initially built up by muted semi acoustic guitars and a tappety beat: with the brass adding emphasis more than anything else, and when things spring to life, it sounds more like a taproom jam that’s got out of control rather than any concerted attempt to rock out. It is pastoral music in the both the sense that it does evoke the countryside and also that it has a bucolic skip about it. But in the right setting there’s nowt wrong or overly cloying with doing that: and Beethoven didn’t turn his nose up on this score, did he?
As ever with Plant Duw, melodies are strong and often take the lead role in dictating the track’s direction; and there are opalescent moments throughout, (the bridge in COB and the Yorkston-style, banjo-driven melody line in FFENAST), but ELLIFANTTODD is particularly beautiful: a lament that switches elegantly between major and minor keys, and resting a lot of on a beautiful reprise. It’s also a track that seems to have an instrument chosen for every section: running through them like a fashion victim trying on shirts in a changing booth. But flippancy aside, it’s a lovely release, and really worth your time.