Swansea-born songwriter Tom Emlyn has just released his latest album, ‘Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 15,’ vividly depicting why he is one of the most prolific and inventive emerging songwriters in Wales. Recorded in 2018 and mastered by Charlie Francis (R.E.M., Pixies) it is a treasure trove of recordings dating back to 2016, 2017 and 2018. These songs offer a window into the sheer scope of Emlyn’s songwriting talent. His captivating songs uniquely explore the peculiarity of the human condition. On 12th May he will set off on tour to promote the album, starting in Dyddiau Du, Cardiff, and will continue to play across the country at venues and festivals including Brecon Jazz/Fringe Festival.
Emlyn recently shared the video for his latest single ‘It Doesn’t Bother Me’. It’s the follow-up to ‘Broken Mirror’ and ‘Like a Cigarette’ and is the last of three singles from the album ‘Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 1’. Compared to Bob Dylan or Elliott Smith, Tom Emlyn’s sound, while rooted in garage rock, is tinged with psychedelia, folk, jazz, and blues overtones – including a recent adoption of the harmonica as a lead instrument.
“There were many people involved in these tracks – different engineers, studios, producers, and musicians in Swansea and Cardiff. I think the album has a unified feel despite being a bunch of stuff that was recorded in various studios and spaces, before being rescued from the cutting-room floor. It’s a bit of a lighter, ironic affair, full of magic realism and surreal images of the natural world, half-acoustic and half-electric, with an eclectic, eccentric, sprawling feel. Scraped from the bottom of a very deep barrel – but somehow holding together.”
Tom Emlyn crafts honest, swirling evocative songs; tall tales, and dark jokes that cut straight to the bone. His current solo work maps an alternative Southwalian landscape, a hallucinated community drawn from psychogeography and local history. Written on foot and by bus, his observational, poetic lyrics and simple 60s-folk-influenced melodies explore what it means to belong to a place – the bitterness, the love and the humour. “The truth is, all of my music is one long song – constantly flowing from inner worlds and mysterious, unknown places.” He reveals “Songwriting is like a diary for me, and it’s time to share Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 1. with you. It might be a slightly imperfect document, but I think it’s all the better for it.”
Speaking of his latest album he said, “Abandoned work is a normal part of the music-making process, but I felt these songs deserved a second chance. I also wanted to release it as a (small) protest against certain smoke-and-mirrors aspects of the music industry. People will tell you to wait and wait, hold back all of your material for the ‘right time.’ I can’t do that anymore; for me, a song is only new when it’s just been written, although it can be remade in live performance. I find it quite agonising to sit on this material for so many years. I’ll be thirty in 2023. That’s why I want to get this sizeable backlog of unheard material out there, so I can move on to new things, and that’s why this is the third album I’ve released in a year.”
“There were many people involved in these tracks – different engineers, studios, producers, and musicians in Swansea and Cardiff. I think the album has a unified feel despite being a bunch of stuff that was recorded in various studios and spaces, before being rescued from the cutting-room floor. It’s a bit of a lighter, ironic affair, full of magic realism and surreal images of the natural world, half-acoustic and half-electric, with an eclectic, eccentric, sprawling feel. Scraped from the bottom of a very deep barrel – but somehow holding together.”
He reveals “Songwriting is like a diary for me, and it’s time to share Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 1. with you. It might be a slightly imperfect document, but I think it’s all the better for it.”
In summer 2022, Tom released his debut solo album ‘News From Nowhere’, a bittersweet love letter to his hometown of Swansea, described by Adam Walton (BBC Radio Wales) as a record of “undoubted brilliance, eloquence and energy”. Tom’s second album ‘I’ve Seen You In Town’ followed hot on the heels of the first – a more mellow, acoustic affair which He released the ‘Scounger EP’ on Bandcamp this February and his current EP Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 15’ was released on 5th May and will be supported by a tour with dates below:
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Tour dates
May
12th – Dyddiau Du, Cardiff (solo to promote new album)
20th – Second 45 record shop Llanelli (solo to promote new album)
27th – in it together festival Margam
June
16th – Cwrw, Camarthen
17th- Cwrw (solo record shop in-store to promote new album)
17th – Elysium, Swansea (to promote new album)
August
12th – Brecon Jazz/Fringe festival
October
6th – Hippos, Swansea