Galargan

Cardiff-based songwriter and instrumentalist Gareth Bonello, better known as The Gentle Good, explores the traditional song and folklore of his native Wales with his voice, guitar, cello and piano on his poignant and poised fifth studio album, his first solo record since Ruins/Adfeilion won the Welsh Music Prize in 2017. Galargan, roughly translated from the Welsh galar (grief or mourning) and cân (song), originated during the pandemic, a time, he observes, ‘when the world was locked up, when things like loss, despair and fear felt more real than ever. When loved ones disappeared. When anger mixed with the water, and everyone felt like they were screaming into the darkness. In periods like this, when there are no words, the old songs suggest themselves: always relevant, always with something new to reveal.’ He draws especially on the song collections of the late Meredydd Evans and Phyllis Kinney at the National Library of Wales for a bleakly compelling collection that, with its magnificently intricate guitar work and melancholic atmospherics, may well put you in mind of a druidic Nick Drake.