Gruff Rhys
Album: American Interior
Label: Turnstile
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.gruffrhys.com

The album of the app of the book of the film of the adventure, a self-proclaimed 'topographical rock 'n' roll masterpiece', American Interior is a wonderfully together multi-media realisation of a haphazard journey of discovery made by Super Furry Animals chap Gruff Rhys in search of his distant ancestor John Evans.

In 1792, Evans, a dirt poor 22-year-old farmhand from Snowdonia, sailed to America in pursuit of the Madogwys, a once-feted tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans, supposedly the fruit of the Welsh Prince Madoc who in 1170 crossed the Atlantic to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and on to the Mississippi and Missouri Basins, thereby discovering America 400 years before Columbus.

Evans crossed vast swathes of states that had yet to be united, mapping volcanoes that didn't exist, wrestling river reptiles that definitely did, catching malaria, being thrown in jail, making war with the British and defecting to the Spanish until he died in New Orleans in 1799 at the age of 29. According to Rhys it's "an extremely tall story played out on an epic scale", but it has made for a brilliantly compelling set of songs realised with his distinctive blend of hi- and no-fi.

Acoustic guitars are the primary building block throughout, but there are field samples, weird samples and wired examples of digital bleeps and bloops that somehow only add to the wondrous tales being spun by the storyteller.

The songs grew out of Gruff's so-called "investigative concert tour" that found him and film maker Dylan Goch retracing Evans' footsteps with a PowerPoint presentation and a three-foot tall felt avatar of the Snowdonian explorer. The result is a remarkably focussed album of well-honed songcraft, precise lyricism and sympathetically produced space age baroque 'n' roll.

Can't wait for the rest of the American Interior media.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk