Gruff Rhys

One of the great pop eccentrics of his generation, Gruff Rhys emerged in the mid-’90s as the frontman for the Welsh neo-psychedelic quintet Super Furry Animals. Debuting as impish guitar pranksters, SFA quickly developed an appetite for adventure, a sensibility maintained in his work outside the band. Rhys stepped out on SFA while the group was still active, releasing the Welsh-language solo debut Yr Atal Genhedlaeth in 2005 and teaming up with Boom Bip for the electro-pop duo Neon Neon, whose 2008 album Stainless Style earned wide acclaim. Once Super Furry Animals retired in 2010, Rhys pursued a number of ambitious creative endeavors, ranging from the 2014 multi-media project American Interior and the orchestral 2018 LP Babelsberg to Seeking New Gods, a myth-making exercise about a volcano mixed by Mario Caldato, Jr. of Beastie Boys fame.
Born in 1970, Rhys played in Creation Records’ Emily as well as Ffa Coffi Pawb, but his first foray into the musical arts was at the ripe age of five, when he wrote an odd little number about a train driver who’s contemplating his own death. In 1990, a chance meeting helped lead to the development of what would become Super Furry Animals. First a left-field techno group, then a whacked-out guitar group, SFA got much of their character and respect from Rhys’ outlandish and obscure lyrical slants. After many critically acclaimed singles and full-lengths, Rhys released his solo outing, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, in 2005. And in true Gruff Rhys form, it was an entirely Welsh affair. He followed with a small sampling of dates in his native homeland. When Super Furry Animals moved to Rough Trade, the label also picked up Rhys’ solo work and released his second album, Candylion, early in 2007 (Team Love released it in the U.S. shortly afterward). That same year, Neon Neon, a collaborative project of Rhys and Boom Bip, released Stainless Style, an electro-pop concept album about auto tycoon John DeLorean. Rhys next stepped outside of SFA in 2010 for The Terror of Cosmic Loneliness, a duet album with Tony Da Gatorra. In 2011 he released his third solo album, Hotel Shampoo, featuring production from Andy Votel. He returned to Neon Neon for 2013′s Praxis Makes Perfect and went on to devote himself to an ambitious multimedia project called American Interior. An album, a movie, and a book, American Interior traced Rhys’ journey through America to track the legend of John Evans, a Welshman who searched for the legendary lost tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans in 1792. The project was unveiled in the spring of 2014 with the album seeing release in May of that year.
In 2018, Rhys released Babelsberg, a lush, sweeping album recorded with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. A year later, he returned with Pang!, a collaboration with South African electronic musician Muzi that was primarily sung in Welsh. Rhys released Seeking New Gods, an album he started during the American tour supporting Babelsberg, in May 2021. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Chris True