“Gruff Rhys is almost excessively capable, largely because he never handles things with too heavy a hand. And so the kitchen sink drama of ‘Babelsberg’ – his first record for Rough Trade since 2005’s ‘Candylion’ – is naturally more Jarvis Cocker than Tom Waits. On ‘The Club’ he sings about being tossed out of, well, a club, with cheery simplicity. ‘They threw me out the club, into the darkest alle”
“On Babelsberg, Gruff Rhys heads for the sunset”
“When last we heard from Gruff Rhys, in 2016, the Welsh singer and Super Furry Animals frontman was gently encouraging his fellow Britons to vote against Brexit with the song “I Love EU.” That didn’t turn out so well, but Rhys was working on some other music, too: he recorded the 10 tracks on his new solo album, Babelsberg, around the same time, and then shelved them for 18 months until the compose”
“The Super Furry Animals frontman has always been political, but he’s never sounded as spiteful as he does on this satirical portrait of the United States in 2018.”
