Gruff Rhys: American Interior
Woodlands Church, Bristol | 11 September
Gruff Rhys – he of Super Furry Animals, Neon Neon and Gruff Rhys fame – sits at the altar of a very 21st century sort of a church (one with a bar, at least for tonight). He has as his tools a PowerPoint slideshow, a metronome, a small record player, an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. He wears an impressive wolfen headdress, places a blank-eyed marionette at his side. He sits at the altar, and he tells a story.
The story he tells, through charmingly bumbling anecdotes, maps and pictures, consistently hilarious and enlightening insights and a collection of songs which alternate between the psychedelic, textured indie for which he first made his name and keening country-folk, is impressively dense and cyclical. It comes swathed in layers of history and fictionality. It’s the story of Gruff and the aforementioned marionette as they embark on a pilgrimage, tracing the journey of John Evans, a blank-eyed 18th century Welsh traveller who, in turn, was tracing the journey of a mythologised clan of 14th century Welsh settlers who, some said, were amongst the earliest ancestors of Native Americans. And so the tales and journeys become entwined in one another. As we travel along the Alabama, us following Gruff, Gruff following John, John following a route the settlers may or may not have taken (we won’t spoil that for you), we too become embedded in these layers of historicity and fictionality. It’s intriguing, deeply involving and – to this Welsh soul – profoundly poignant.
Gruff performs tracks from the album/travelogue from which the show takes its name (a multimedia effort also incorporating a film and a book), whilst also calling on previous solo tracks – Shark Ridden Waters, from 2011 album Hotel Shampoo, fits snugly as the soundtrack to their passage across the Atlantic, while Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru (‘Driving Driving Driving’) from 2007’s Candylion is a jaunty accompaniment as Evans continues to make tracks. Gruff fumbles with a busted metronome and a dodgy harmonica, he plays scratchy dubplates of himself playing drum machines, his iPad comes across like a knackered old overhead projector, bringing home memories of schoolday innocence.
But the songs function as part of a greater holistic experience. As with Neon Neon and their startlingly ambitious Praxis Makes Perfect live show, this is a fiercely inventive, untouchably creative cross-section of popular music and oral history, and the parallels between the two. Gruff embeds himself, and by extension his audience, within an ancient tale that’s also not-so-ancient which such flawless precision and consideration, you’re left slack-jawed and gushing with appreciation. No one is, or maybe has ever, toyed with and rearranged ideas of music and history and fiction and performance and language and identity quite like this artist is doing right now, as bumbling and loveable and quirky as his every step may seem. He’s as much a pioneer as the characters he sings about, and one day we’ll look back and realise just how important his work was.
– – – – – – – – – – –
Words: Geraint Davies
CONNECT TO CRACK
