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Tom Emlyn announces his new album ‘Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 15’ released on the 5th of May.
Swansea-born songwriter Tom Emlyn vividly depicts why he is one of the most prolific and inventive songwriters emerging songwriters in Wales, with his new album ‘Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 15’ released on the 5th of May. Recorded in 2018 and mastered by Charlie Francis ( R.E.M., Pixies ). 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 exploring the particularity and peculiarity of human experience.
Featuring his gorgeous recent singles ‘ Broken Mirror ’ - a heartfelt and poetic ballad of lost love, watch the video here , and ‘ Like a Cigarette ’ inspired by his days busking outside a cafe in Frankfurt acting as a living and breathing earworm that charts his travels around Europe and Germany in 2017. Plus forthcoming third single ‘It doesn’t bother me’ . 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.
Tom explains “ 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 .”
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.”
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" . It has been positively received, with airplay and support from Radio Wales, BBC Horizons, R.E.P.E.A.T. fanzine, God Is In The TV, and Joyzine, among others. Tom 's second album ‘I've Seen You In Town’ followed hot on the heels of the first - a more mellow, acoustic affair which was also well received. He also released the ‘Scounger EP’ on Bandcamp this February. He is currently promoting these records with intimately explosive solo and band performances across Wales and beyond, with a string of releases planned for 2023.
Tour Dates
22nd April - The Moon, Cardiff
4th-6th May - Focus Wales, Wrexham
12th May - Dyddiau Du, Cardiff (solo to promote new album)
20th May - Second 45 record shop Llanelli (solo to promote new album)
27th May - in it together festival Margam
16th June - Cwrw, Camarthen
17th June - Cwrw (solo record shop in-store to promote new album)
17th June - Elysium, Swansea (to promote new album)
12th August - Brecon Jazz/Fringe festival
6th October - Hippos, Swansea
https://tomemlyn.bandcamp.com/
https://twitter.com/tom_emlyn
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