Feeling a bit blue the other day* I realised that I hadn’t set foot in Wales for about 2 months. Which is permissible if one lives in Narnia, Nanjing or Nineveh, less so when you can actually see the Welsh hills in the distance from your back bedroom. No wonder I felt put upon and washed out, in need of some pastoral restoration, drained of inspiration and whimsy.
I reached for Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, of course. A band from my hometown, who fused rural psych sounds, pop and folk into something decidedly green and soft, mostly. I always loved their total lack of anything remotely resembling ‘cool’, they were very much a culture in their own petri dish, singing in either English or Welsh, depending on what sounded better at the time**.
They almost hit something adjacent to fame with ’97’s Barafundle before locking and barring the door to their cottage with the more abstruse Gorky 5. I was a first day buyer for Spanish Dance Troupe in 1999, back in the days when vinyl was a very hard thing to find indeed, vinyl from obscure West Walians even more so. My memory of it was that I liked the title track but it had some irritating bits on it, I didn’t care I just needed to smell the smoke from the green, green.
From the pleasingly corrugated-effect LP cover on in Spanish Dance Troupe is a soothing, warming thing at first.
Opening track ‘Hallway’ is great, a coherently odd and restive song about loss. The instrumentation is delicate and precise, conjuring a wistful air of wind and withering, all pulled back into harmony via Euros Childs voice^. That the decidedly non-serious, slightly jarring ‘Poodle Rockin” collides into the back of it, just adds to the fun – I have always taken it as a comment on Brit Pop, but knowing GZM it is probably a song about a poodle.
The beautifully wistful^^ ‘She Lives On A Mountain’ is the type of pastoral ditty the band could seemingly extrude at will, the violin and brass proving that some flowers can and should be gilded. Instrumental track ‘Drws’ is the sole Welsh titled track on Spanish Dance Troupe and is a rather gorgeous instrumental that needed to be far longer than its’ allotted 1:11. It does act as a very handy portal for the rather light ‘Over And Out’ which follows it.
Don't you worry I didn't say goodbye I didn't mean to cry, but beauty Wrapped up in all life's cruelty Will never pass you by
The strangely Victorian melodies of ‘Don’t You Worry’ last less than a minute but deliver a punch, before delivering us to Carmarthen via the Carolinas on ‘Far Away Eyes’, not a Stones cover.
The discordant chant of ‘Hair Like Monkey Teeth Like Dog’ arrives to stop any accusations of tweeness before teeing up the best track on the LP by contrast.
The title track of Spanish Dance Track is still a winner for me in any season. It’s a beautifully upbeat tale of running away with a, umm, posse of exponents of the terpsichorean arts from the Iberian peninsula. Who can’t relate to that? it’s a fun, swishy treat, sporting jaunty lyrics, impossibly great trumpet and nostalgic yearnings for school. There’s the faintest suggest of ‘Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)’ around the edges too, a plus I think.
The rest of the LP cannot compete, I like the stridency hidden in ‘Desolation Blues’ and the sweetly slaying ‘Murder Ballad’. I also enjoy the WISTFUL ‘Christmas Eve’, although the closing ‘Humming Song’ breaks the mood for me by guitaring too hard.
It was probably 15 years ago that I last played Spanish Dance Troupe, maybe I wasn’t MF-ing wistful enough for it to resonate so well with me back then. It is certainly a better LP than I remembered it being, moodier and more delicate, like yours truly.
Should any of you out there need a sniff of a reminder about your lost rural Welsh adolescence I cannot recommend Spanish Dance Troupe to you more highly.
Spanish Dance Troupe, along with the following years’ The Blue Trees was as far as I went with Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, personnel changes and a comparative lack of inspiration later, did for me as a fan. Mind you, my favourite of theirs is the utterly nutso psychedelic craziness of Bwyd Time, so what do I know?
1156 Down.
*as in sad, not the other, umm, kind of blue. For once, jazz mag fans.
**I particularly loved that.
^I assume, I struggle to match the singer to the song here occasionally.
^^I may use this word 1,349 times during this review, please accept my insincere apologies, it isn’t poverty of expression on my part, just aptness.
It’s always good to recharge the batteries. Since I haven’t left home in years, I’m always fully charged. And out my back bedroom window I can see… the neighbours. And part of a Starbucks. And a grocery store behind that. Welsh hills, indeed!
In honour of your birthplace and my own heritage I put the shiny disc of this in the car for yesterday’s errands.
Unlike you, I don’t have it on vinyl but like you, I played it a few times on acquisition then kind of forgot it. I enjoyed its eclectic rural psychedelia, while agreeing that it is a little patchy. If Syd Barrett and the Incredible String Band had a love child it might sound this, especially if it was fed a diet of early Mothers of Invention and Simon and Garfunkel during its formative years plus a couple of tabs of acid with the mashed banana.
Welsh whimsy. It’s a thing.
PS. One of the highlights of my difficult 1998 trip to Germany (and then the UK) was visiting Llandudno. Pretty sure it was the local Youth Hostel where I practiced juggling with the teacher of a group of French schoolgirls. He had glorious illuminated balls that criss-crossed between us as evening fell, flying like psychedelic meteors (and, in my case, hitting the grass regularly). Sounds like a GZM song, really.
PSS. I climbed Snowdon too. I was younger then.
Welsh … whimsy. Hmm. I may be forced to concede that it might, possibly exist.
GZM always raved about Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers a lot in interviews. Plus there is a slight sound of school assemblies about them too, the occasional use of recorders and the fact that, living in the and of song, we often used to have hugely long musical assemblies.
Llandudno is a beaut and I look forward to the chapter in your forthcoming memoires called ‘Hitting The Grass Regularly’.
Wales must be a wonderful place. I hope I can drop by one day.
It is wonderful and green. Congrats on the election results btw!
Thanks, my friend. It was hard and these past four years were a suffocating tragedy, so this feels awesome, even if victory came through a margin that was way too thin given the circumstances. But then again, since we had powerful religious groups, the military, the police forces, and the governmental apparatus all almost criminally working in favor of that dirty bastard, maybe a margin like that was gigantic and heroic in many ways.
Here’s hoping we can rebuild a bit of what was destroyed and stop things like this from happening ever again in the future.
We can all breathe a little easier after that Matt.
Amen to that!
Funny enough, I was in Wales last weekend visiting my daughter. She asked me to give her a lift to meet a friend in Swansea but she didn’t realize that Swansea City was at home to Cardiff City on Sunday. Traffic nightmare!
Ouch! That’s a nasty one. I’ve been a couple of times in the last week to recharge my Welsh batteries. I went to Angel Bay (near Llandudno in N.Wales) yesterday to see 5-day old seal pups, that was a wonderful walk.
Club any?
Nope, just gave them my seal of approval.