This is the fourth part of the rundown of my Top 10 favourite Welsh albums of 2013. It's a messily subjective and undignified love letter to Welsh music.
You'll be familiar with the ardent tone if you've already scaled part one (The Joy Formidable's Wolf's Law and Future Of The Left's How To Stop Your Brain In An Accident), part two (Cate Le Bon's Mug Museum and Euros Childs' Situation Comedy) or part three (Sweet Baboo's Ships).
I further celebrate a great year for Welsh LPs this coming Saturday night (14 December 2013) on BBC Radio Wales.
So, back to the Top 10, in no particular order.
Georgia Ruth - Week Of Pines
'Bravery' might seem like a strange word to use with regards music-making. Firefighters are brave; soldiers, too. Anyone who works in the health service is more deserving of a medal than most.
So it's a different type of bravery here, clearly, but make no mistake, Georgia Ruth's debut album is very much the result of a singular courage to fulfil her own artistic vision and not be swayed by prevailing winds or the record industry.
Georgia had some experience of that record industry, auditions for major labels and the like, but they wanted to mould her into something that she was not. Georgia stood fast, had the courage of her convictions – and Week Of Pines is a wonderful evocation of those convictions.
Nothing has been tailored for radio (10 of the 11 songs are over four minutes long); nothing here makes any attempt to curry critical favour by evoking transient zeitgeists; nothing here is anything less than honest, soulful and heart-breakingly beautiful.
And Georgia's artistic courage goes deeper than that. She hasn't pretended that she grew up listening to the Velvet Underground or The Stooges. This album is suffused by a love for Laurel Canyon, Jone Baez, Bob Dylan's unfashionable post 60s catalogue (Desire, Street Legal), Paul Simon and both Welsh and American folk music. These are all influences that are recognisable in the beautiful, yearning melodies, the unaffected poetry of the lyrics and David Wrench's wonderfully present production.
It's the influences in the undertow of the record that give it a whole other level of intrigue: the title track's motorik beat; Mapping's Eno-esque (Here Come The Warm Jets) fade out; the high ambient tone that gilds Hallt. Dovecote is the most 'experimental' recording on any of the 10 albums I'll write about... this on an album that earned airplay everywhere from Terry Wogan's weekend Radio 2 show to Steve Lamacq on 6 Music.
Its universality is in Georgia's rich, sonorous, transfixing voice, and the fact that her songwriting – and interpretation of other people's songs – is rich with the ability to marry evocative lyrics with tunes that your ears will not tire of listening to.
For a time, Georgia struggled to find a way to best arrange and represent her obvious talents. When fate steered her in the direction of Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog, fate was demonstrating rare taste. That band's easy (far from easy, obviously) musical eloquence, their innate understanding that you best serve a song by casting a glow onto it, rather than flooding it with halogen brightness, gives this album its body and physical presence.
There's a sustained note that Georgia sings two minutes and 58 seconds into Etrai that is one of the most human and beautiful moments on any record I've ever heard. Ah, I'd mostly avoided cack-handed hype. It took some effort, I can tell you.
Week Of Pines is a wonderful album, a worthy winner of this year's Welsh Music Prize.
Suitable for: Dreamers and romantics of any age. Lovers of melody and fires on the horizon.
Unsuitable for: No, this is suitable for all. All people with ears will be bewitched by its charms.
Gallops - Yours Sincerely, Dr Hardcore
I still don't know whether I'm mostly frustrated or mostly sad at Gallops' demise. They release a breathtaking, sonically epic and exploratory album, tour it a little bit, and then split up and go their own ways.
They'd spent the last five years building a reputation as one of Wales' finest live bands – muscular, inventive, complex and thoroughly now. It wasn't an easy combination to record. Their debut EP, and single proper, had been fine but a little wishy washy compared to the all-out power of their live set.
There's nothing remotely wishy washy about Yours Sincerely, Dr Hardcore. It's like spinning in a tornado... crashes of thunder from Moz's drums, synths and guitars like lightning flashes, or bizarre debris.
The complexity of the music, and the influences at work here (everything from dark metal to Fela Kuti, with a host of other experimental electronic artists I shan't pretend I know the names of), never detracts from the actual listening experience. Gallops take an intellectual, leftfield approach to music but this isn't a soundtrack forged inside a pseud's rectum. It may have hipster credentials but there's nothing faux or posey here (other than my use of the words 'faux' or 'posey').
It's the wonders of the solar system in sonic microcosm, with more bass. Much more bass.
And it's a unique album that will stand as a real marker for what 2013 sounded like in years to come.
You can't say that about every album on my list.
Whatever Gallops do apart in the future, they can feel proud of their band's last will and testament. Majestic noise.
Suitable for: The sonically adventurous. Teens who dream fluorescent dreams.
Unsuitable for: Trolley wallies with supermarket sweep music collections.
