Cardiff’s Huw Evans releases his fifth LP, a charming, tender, wistful, sensitive, intelligent, and beautiful collection of alternative pop with a folk/country hue, co-produced with Cate Le Bon, and players including Stephen Black (Sweet Baboo), and other key personnel on the Welsh scene, such as Euan Hinshelwood (Younghusband, Cate Le Bon) on sax. There’s an overall theme of upbeat grief, emotions moving between melancholy and hope, fuelled no doubt by the death of his mother died of cancer in 2018, and encapsulated in the tender mix of feelings present in the lovely Suppression Street. The album is also rich in double-edged wordplay, such as the line “Peace comes for dinner/But I’m forever eating lunch”. His songwriting is perhaps influenced by a mixture of Harry Nilsson and fellow Welshman Gruff Rhys, but the delightful oddness of lyrics also feels like a male parallel to Aldous Harding. And with his expressive falsetto there’s range of musical styles, from the electro-pop of Athens At Night to the slower, more gentle piano-based narrative song I Need Him. Many other standouts including the title track, Empty Room, the vivid, slowly growing Denver, and the stompy rhythm and brass-infused single Plastic Man. An album that grows and offers more on each listen with detail and beauty, this is classy, fascinating work – vividly poetic, clever and charming. Out on Heavenly Recordings.
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