Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys will undertake a tour of the UK and Ireland this autumn to showcase songs from his upcoming seventh solo album Seeking New Gods. The Pembrokeshire-born, North Wales-raised singer-songwriter announced an initial raft of twelve dates across this British Isles this October and November on his social media channels this morning, with further dates in Wales yet to be announced.
Reminder that tickets for the SEEKING NEW GODS tour go on sale tomorrow 1st April, 9am (not a joke or some kind of stunt) See poster for dates – Welsh gigs to be announced soon & hopefully more cities & countries next year! https://t.co/ZMnFrYabYi pic.twitter.com/xYqQNVJGz2
— Gruff Rhys (@gruffingtonpost) March 31, 2021
Seeking New Gods, which is released on May 21st on Rough Trade, is Rhys’ first outing since 2019’s Pang! – the artist’s third Welsh language album. Pang! was nominated for the 2020 Welsh Music Prize, and received positive critical feedback, with Uncut praising Rhys for “once again embracing the possibilities of technology and harnessing modern, global sounds to enhance his unique vision.”
The new LP was partly recorded in the arid Mojave desert in the heart of the rugged American south-west, and was mixed by Mario Caldato, the Brazilian-American sound engineer best-known for his work with the Beastie Boys. Whilst it was initially designed as a concept album focusing on Mount Paektu (an active volcano on the Chinese-North Korean border), Rhys has been clear that the record is more human than geological.
In a statement released through Rough Trade, the Welshman said: “The album is about people and the civilisations, and the spaces people inhabit over periods of time. How people come and go but the geology sticks around and changes more slowly. I think it’s about memory and time. It’s still a biography of a mountain, but now it’s a Mount Paektu of the mind. You won’t learn much about the real mountain from listening to this record but you will feel something, hopefully.”
Last month Rhys unveiled the album’s melodic, up-tempo lead single Loan Your Loneliness. The track was accompanied by a stylish video directed by longtime collaborator Mark James. Speaking to NME about the video, Rhys said “The monochrome has made it look much sharper and stylish (for want of a better word – I don’t think I know what style is!!) like a Japanese 60’s pop show or something! We added a layer of cloud to add some spot colour and to integrate the album sleeve aesthetic to the video. The colour was always stronger at the very end – I don’t particularly like the brown slippery dinosaurs but love the mammoths and northern lights…. so we bought it back to colour by the end – the narrative being that a soloing guitarist accidentally invented colour TV with sheer exuberance!”
The current schedule for Gruff Rhys’ Seeking New Gods Tour is as follows:
21/10/21 – Crookes Social Club – Sheffield
22/10 – Storey’s Field Centre – Cambridge
23/10 – Albert Hall – Manchester
26/10 – O2 Academy 2 – Oxford
27/10 – Electric Ballroom – London
29/10 – Dolan’s Warehouse – Limerick
30/10 – Liberty Hall Theatre – Dublin
01/11 – Komedia – Bath
02/11 – Wedgewood Rooms – Southsea
03/11 – Norwich Arts Centre – Norwich
