ADWAITH - WELSH INDIE ROCK
It’s rare that I discover musicians whose work I really enjoy. Rarer that I like more than a handful of any band’s songs. Rarer still that the artist in question is current, young and at the height of their powers.
Last year I discovered two artists largely new to me, the first being the Japanese band Hitsujibungaku, but after sifting through their various albums, I only ended up liking two of their songs. Towards the end of the year I got into Stereolab, an Anglo-French band of the 1990s, and managed to find an excellent fifteen or so tunes out of their large oeuvre, but the majority of their stuff - no thanks.
Then I found Adwaith.
Just a couple of weeks ago, the good old Apple Music algorythym told me to check them out. Hmm, the name looked familiar, and I had actually encountered this outfit before when I was exploring Welsh-language music. I’d added an album of thiers to my collection, but had somehow forgotten to listen to it.
I’ve known about and liked other Welsh artists like Gwenno for quite some time - a singer who releases not only in Welsh but also in Cornish, being only one of two hundred or so native speakers of the latter tongue. I also like a few tracks by Datblygu, an experimental outfit from the 80s much beloved by John Peel, as well as the punk band Anhrefn (there’s a hilarious video of them performing in a building on the top of Mt Snowdon to the bemusement and distain of English tourists).
But Adwaith…they are superb! This female trio released their first album ‘Melyn’ in 2018 as teenagers, and won the Welsh Music Prize, a feat they repeated with their second album ‘Bato Mato,’ released in 2022. I find the vast majority of songs on these two records to be absolutely wonderful. Their sound is dreamy, with heavilly treated vocals and guitars steeped in large ammounts of reverb, switching from near-punk to shoegaze to folk, but always with top-notch melodies that stay with you.
The fact that the lyrics are in Welsh just adds an extra layer of mystery and elegance to it all - and Welsh is in my opinion a very beautiful and melodic tongue (guttural ‘ch’ and hissed ‘ll’ notwithstanding).
It’s odd that some Brits would balk at listening to a song that wasn’t in English, and yet that is how most of the world consumes its music without any problems. We have Google Translate, FFS. Let’s not forget that Welsh is a true British language whose earlier form was spoken in the British Isles a thousand years before the Anglo-Saxons showed up.
Anyway, I seem to have become a fan of Adwaith just at the right time, as they are set to release the 23-track double album ‘Solas’ next month - yippee!!