Former front man with Yr Ods, bilingual solo artist Griff Lynch has been steadily catching our ear with a series of brilliantly crafted bold pop single releases. Each one possessed of an infectious craft with just enough quirky imagination to make them sound individual, Lynch’s dreamlike, Welsh intoned wistful vocal edge giving life to his lyrical themes that concern a “cocktail of deaths, break-ups and boredom.” They are back-dropped by inventive production, replete with off kilter beats, synth layers and triggered loops, whilst it’s influenced by the ambitious pop music of Tears for Fears and Talk Talk, at the same time following in the quirky pop lineage of Gruff Rhys and Euros Childs, Lynch is still constantly pushing his sound toward new borders. These songs stand out as smart knowing millennial pop cuts for these dissatisfied and unrequited days and at times they sound utterly peerless.
He’s just released his new Welsh language single ‘Tynnu Dant’ that’s a surreptitious earworm is cheerfully about “someone pulling their teeth and hair, in a maniac style, just to feel anything.”
This release follows 2016’s debut single ‘Hir Oes Dy’ which according to Lynch “came from a need to do lo-fi electro music, but with a natural tendency to be a bit epic with choruses. I think it sort of works though. ”
The follow-up arrived early this year, Lynch’s glorious first English-speaking single ‘Don’t Count On Me’ that if it was released in the 1980s might well have been on Top of the Pops: “It started out as a proper folky acoustic song” remembers Lynch “but I didn’t have any friends to play along with what I had in mind, so again went for the Electronic /psych vibes.” It’s a buoyant bittersweet hymn obsessed with urging someone not to rely on you, when you can’t rely on yourself, while undulating waves of percussion shudders with pompy pianos and sweeping orchestration, and it sounds utterly fantastic.
More recently this summer, the contemptuously titled ‘No One Cares’ emerged, its vocal refrains that simmer with existential angst release like the water being opened from a damn, given a duality by spiraling bittersweet choruses inspired by all of life’s tantalising disappointment and joy, and decorated by witty Jean Michele Jarre -like synth solos. “By now I’ve sort of already committed to the Electronic genre, so I thought fuck, I need some more tunes. This is the result of that” admitted Lynch.
Balancing on the precipice between universality and intimacy, down-tempo off beat, personal and universal anthems, Lynch’s work possesses an unabashed zest and scope that doesn’t darken our inbox too often these days, and thus he’s most certainly a Welsh artist to listen in wonder to.
Griff Lynch is working on his debut album now which will be out late this year/early next. He’s also playing Festival No. 6 in September.
