Griff Lynch (Yr Ods) announces UK tour.. Debut album Blas Melysa’r Mis is out now

Debut solo album from Welsh songwriter and member of Yr Ods,
ft guest appearance from James Dean Bradfield (Manic Street Preachers)


Griff Lynch

 

Announces UK Tour in November & December

Debut album, Blas Melysa’r Mis 
out today (10th October) via Lwcus T

Album features guest vocals from James Dean Bradfield
of the Manic Street Preachers

Praise for Blas Melysa'r Mis:

“James Dean Bradfield makes a bilingual appearance on Same Old Show, and while he might come across like Super Furry Animals doing ELO on the title track, a West Walian Sparks on Kombucha's fruity disco glam, or Bill Ryder-Jones on the teary-eyed Os Ti'n Teimlo, Lynch weaves his own singular spell here.” 
- MOJO, 4*

“...it blends some complex ideas with an open, inviting melodic appeal; moving between English and Welsh lyrics, Griff manages to take his audience along with him.”
- Clash

“..And how well worth waiting for are these eleven pop gems, melody-rich and colourful, pop and folk and electronic and gorgeous strings combine to make a very special album indeed.”
- God Is In The TV
 

Today, Griff Lynch releases his debut solo album Blas Melysa’r Mis via Lwcus T, and announces a November/December UK tour, including a London show on 2nd December (full dates below).

Labelled a "Welsh language delight" by MOJO Magazine, home sits at the heart of Blas Melysa’r Mis. It’s a record that grapples, in part, with falling out of love with a place and the transitional process of moving onto the next, whilst also exploring the feeling of home in its deepest emotional sense.

Live Dates:

19th November - Sheffield - Sidney & Matilda
21st November - Felinheli - Llofft
2nd December - London - The Forge at The Lower Third
5th December - Cardigan - Y Selar
6th December - Aberystwyth - Cwps

Tickets: https://linktr.ee/grifflynch

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Blas Melysa’r Mis Album Stream:
https://orcd.co/blasmelysarmis

Lwcus T Shop / Vinyl:
https://lwcust.com/siop

More about Blas Melysa’r Mis...

For Griff Lynch, his motherland of Wales’ heritage and vernacular have always been intrinsic to his music. With Yr Ods - the psych-pop outfit formed with a group of friends whilst at Aberystwyth University in the early 2010s - the Welsh language band’s focus was on both being immersed in the Welsh arts community and also ensuring this culture breaks through the glass ceiling and “gets heard on a bigger stage”. It’s a flag that the London-based artist continues to fly with his solo work, creating a balance that celebrates the native Celtic language and forms part of this rich creative heritage whilst also being accessible to non-Welsh speakers.

“I think it's attitude more than anything,” Lynch says on creating this accessibility that invites wider audiences into his music. “Not to be too hippie about it, but it is the energy that you put behind it.” And this considered energy emanates across Blas Melysa’r Mis, with an emotive charisma and expressive melodic abundance tangible throughout. The bilingualism of the record also acts as a bridge; “it’s a technique that we used to do with Yr Ods, where you would have a bilingual song on the album or there was an English language chorus or verse, and all of a sudden it's a hook to subconsciously draw people who don't speak Welsh in”.

Notably, this approach appears on “Same Old Show”, which features James Dean Bradfield. The Manic Street Preachers’ vocalist and guitarist’s involvement on the record was a full circle moment for Lynch - who would go to Cob Records, his local record store in Bangor growing up, to get the latest Manics CD a few days before release. The collaboration was also a long-time coming; Lynch and Bradfield were first introduced through Emily Eavis and Nick Dewey when Yr Ods played Glastonbury, with a plan at the time for the band to get in the studio with the Manics frontman. Whilst that never quite materialised, the two of them kept bumping into each other in Cardiff over the years since and when Lynch messaged to see if Bradfield wanted to sing on a track, it finally all came together. Furthermore, the track marks the first time Bradfield sings in Welsh on a record; “I texted him a link to the song and to my surprise he answered me in Welsh, I didn't even know at the time that he had learned Welsh,” Lynch details, “For someone like him, a Welsh icon, to learn the language means a great deal to Welsh speakers. It has a lasting, positive impact on our culture, one that James himself might not fully realise.”

Written over the past five years, Blas Melysa’r Mis travels through Lynch’s different headspaces during this time, tracing back to lockdown times and also going through breakups - both romantic and with the city of Cardiff where Lynch had lived for a decade. “The constant underlying thing in it is that movement of wanting to move away from one place and go to another”, Lynch says. Having lived in Cardiff for so long, he felt a desire to find a new perspective of his Welsh identity, something which having this distance between himself and the city has afforded him. In writing the tracks, Lynch also found himself going back to a lot of music he listened to in his late teens - Catatonia, 90s Brit-pop, early Radiohead and Welsh pop like Y Cyrff and Big Leaves. This breadth of influences and personal emotional contemplations poured into the record is reflected sonically, encompassing more pensive tracks like “Fe Lyncodd”, the playful jangle-pop of “Kombucha” and the psych-rock expansiveness of “Blas Melysa’r Mis” or “Y Pethau Heb eu Dweud”.

There’s also a luscious orchestral motif that lilts and soars throughout. Having recorded the tracks himself in his bedroom and small studios, it was important for Lynch to work with real strings and brass instruments to further elevate the album, “taking it from computer recording into the real world”. For these instrumental arrangements, he enlisted composer Owain Llwyd. Lynch also worked with other long-time collaborators from the Welsh arts scene, including Gwenno producer Rhys Edwards who lent his mixing expertise on some of the tracks.

“Even though I move about all the time, access to home is always really important,” Lynch says, with home in its truest, grounding sense for him being the mountains in North Wales where he grew up. And it’s this sentiment that permeates Blas Melysa’r Mis; a vibrantly evocative debut that sees Griff Lynch recalibrating this connection between identity and home whilst firmly laying down artistic roots of his own.

Tracklisting:

1. Gwlad Fy Nyhead
 2. Cyntaf i’r Felin
 3. Fe Lyncodd
 4. Dyna ni i’r Pant y Rhed y Dŵr
 5. Same Old Show (feat. James Dean Bradfield)
 6. Blas Melysa’r Mis
 7. Kombucha
 8. Look Out for Number One
 9. Ti Sy’n Troi (feat. Lleuwen)
10. Os Ti’n Teimlo
11. Y Pethau Heb eu Dweud

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