(Rough Trade) Sung in Welsh, produced by South African artist Muzi, Rhys’s latest is a chamber folk-rock minor masterpiece
After last year’s expansive, magnificent Babelsberg, Gruff Rhys has pared things back, although not by much. Where Babelsburg went the full orchestra, Pang! confines itself to the chamber, its songs not draped in instrumentation, but coloured with brass and woodwind where necessary, to supplement the pastoral acoustic mood of the album. There is, though, another form of expansiveness: for all its grounding in very
British folk-rock styles, Pang! is a global record – there’s an explicit influence from
South Africa (it was produced by the South African electronica artist Muzi) with some lyrics sung in Zulu, and in some of the instrumental detailing – the jittering electronic bells of Ara Deg, the interplay of guitar and percussion on Bae Bae Bae.