Sweet sorrow
Confessional box or jukebox? The former Super Furry Animal’s latest is a bit of both.
By James McNair.
Gruff Rhys
★★★★
Sadness Sets Me Free
ROUGH TRADE. CD/DL/LP
THOUGH IT stops well short of the ardent self-loathing that fired Radiohead’s Creep, a pronounced seam of self-criticism runs through Gruff Rhys’s latest. It’s there in the frank fessup which offsets Bad Friend’s spry, buoyant chamber-pop, and it’s embedded in I Tendered My Resignation, an inventively-titled break-up song which builds and builds around piano and pedal-steel while its protagonist deems himself “unworthy” of his partner’s love/commitment. Is the resignee Rhys? Was this one of the “bad policy decisions” he alludes to in the LP’s accompanying notes? What’s clear is that fucking up – or thinking we have – gets good people down. What to do, then, but embrace the sweet sadness ’til it sets you free?