Gruff Rhys @ St Philips Church, Salford


Gruff Rhys is at war with his back catalogue. When his solo career began it was a new leaf, a fresh start. His second record, Candylion, took a concept album format and the live show followed. There were In-flight manuals, pilots hats and probably the loveliest welsh girl this side of Shirley Bassey.

His latest record, Hotel Shampoo whose name is taken from a Blackpool hotel run by a former welsh pop star has been sold to us in a similar vein. For the opening night of the tour punters were invited to stay in the hotel - comic relief for neglected welsh musicians. Maybe one day someone will give Mr Rhys such charity.



See, Rhys revels in the idea of being a pop star from Wales. "See this is probably the greatest song ever written," he says wryly before embarking with what is essentially the Welsh version of ‘The Gambler’.



This whole operation could be perceived as cynical shit; of course it's anything but. What Rhys is doing, as he did with The Furries, is take the Welsh language and give it a platform it wouldn't normally get, it this instance it's Salford. Simply, it's a long way off Tom Jones who employs his Welsh heritage for personal use - to prefix a warming biography and/or anecdote. The audience can only anticipate the day this man is the biggest pop star in the world.

[As an aside to what is already a pithy argument, the crowd tonight for one reason or other had a tendency to clap in unison through many of the up-tempo songs like a brain-dead Saturday night gameshow audience, "Bring on the Cycle of Violence"].



Yeah Rhys is experimental, only in the sense that I might try out cucumber on my pizza, taking an established format and changing it on a mostly superficial level, keeping the basics untouched.

Where Rhys comes on top is that he supplies blistering pop tunes in a signature style. Take your bobble hats off and pay respect.