This might surprise you, but some people's idea of a good Friday night out is watching a bloke onstage with an acoustic guitar, a cheap Casio and an even cheaper drum machine, singing entirely in Welsh, writes Kevin Courtney
It certainly comes as a pleasant surprise to Gruff Rhys - he performed just such a show to a packed Sugar Club last month; and he'll probably pull an even bigger audience for his Welsh language stylings when he plays Whelans tomorrow. You can laugh along to such side-splitting tunes as Caerffosiaeth (Sewage City), Pwdin Wy 1 (Egg Pudding 1), Ni Yw Y Byd (We Are The World) and Chwarea'n Troi'n Chwerw (When Play Turns Sour). Your date will be impressed by your good taste and cultured palate.
Better known as the singer with Welsh psychedelic popsters Super Furry Animals, Rhys has just released his début solo album, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth (The Stuttering Generation). Writing over the past few years, and tinkering around in studios in between SFA projects, Rhys has accumulated enough tunes to fill up a CD, and has released it on the band's own Placid Casual label.
"I didn't really think it through," recalls Rhys."They feel like sketches of songs, and I kind of like that quality." Over six fine, critically-acclaimed albums, SFA have provided fans with untold hours of delicious rock 'n' roll pleasure; the least we can do is lend Rhys our ears for just one night.
"It's very specific to its culture, and a lot of the references are to Welsh pop of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s," warns Rhys. "I don't expect people to get it. But I think the record has enough energy to carry it through . . . they'll maybe miss out on some of the musical references and the bad jokes."
For a second, I think he said bath jokes, so strong is Rhys's Welsh accent. The album's title, says Rhys, is both a racy pun and a comment on the new Wales of the 21st century, where towns are overrun by themed sports bars and faceless millennium buildings. Caerffosiaeth is a tale of a fictional Welsh city that's not a million miles away from reality, and Pwdin Wy concerns a relationship that falls apart because the girl of his dreams has caught a disease and dies. Hilarious stuff.
But don't worry: if it all goes over your head Rhys does have a couple of traditional songs about goat-herding on standby. And then there's the chance that he might run off an SFA song, perhaps one from their 2000 Welsh-language album, Mwng. They are preparing for the release of their new English-language album in April or May, by which time Rhys should have finished his solo jaunt around Europe, and be ready to rejoin his bandmates for a full-on tour.
"I'm planning to split up around March as a solo artist - I think there's only one solo artist who's ever split up in the past," deadpans Rhys.
Super Furry Animals may be champions of the Welsh language (they've got a second Welsh-language album written), but they're no Luddites. In both their studio and live work, the band are known for pushing the boundaries of technology - and stretching the budget of their record label, Sony. They released a simultaneous CD/DVD album long before it became standard practice, and released a CD in 5.1 surround sound, beating a certain French synth wizard to the punch, claims Rhys.
"Yeah, we were really angry with Jean-Michel Jarre last year, cos he put out what they said was the first album in 5.1 surround sound, and so we've challenged him to a laser battle at the Pyramids, to the death. But he hasn't come back to us yet."
When it comes to keeping their native language alive, however, Rhys and the rest of his band are unapologetically old-fashioned. Welsh is Rhys's first language, and when he tours Wales, he likes to chat to the audience in their own language. But Welsh-speaking areas are disappearing faster than sports bars are being built, and so Rhys is feeling more and more like a foreign visitor at home. In the past 20 years, he says, the language has gone from being spoken by 90 per cent of the population down to 20 per cent, so he now has to sing and chat in English.
His Dublin gigs, though perplexing, might well remind us of our own language, and how easily we could lose our culture beneath an onslaught of corporate themed bars and international retail brands. Perhaps an Irish-language album from U2 or The Thrills might be in order. How 'bout it lads? "People fight to protect species of plants and species of animal," says Rhys, "and to me people's cultures and differences are very important, and we should celebrate our differences and try and maintain them."
Gruff Rhys plays Whelans, Wexford Street, Dublin tomorrow. The album, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, is out now on Placid Casual
