Meilyr Jones - Race Horses - A Welsh dandy's Roman holiday

interview by Lorenzo Righetto

I wanted to thank you, first of all, for your new record. It's been a while since I listened to an album where I couldn't tell what the next single would be, if you know what I mean. I've read other, more prestigious reviews discussing the “classic” nature of “2013”. Which you could take, I suppose, as a mark of quality but also as a description of the record's sound and tone. Does that flatter you, and was it your precise intention to create a new classic?

It wasn't my intention to make a classic album, quite the opposite really. My only intention was to make nothing other than what ended up being released. All my favourite symphonies and records are strange, but the more you listen to them, the more familiar they become, and they stop being strange, they become reassuring, without ever ceasing to amaze. That said, I'm not the best person to understand what I've done, only what I wanted to try to do.

“2013”, to me, really sounds like something an Italian artist might write on the Italian leg of his grand tour. It's flamboyant and ironic, delicate and bold, classy and popular, free and classic at the same time. Were you more scared or fascinated by the idea of falling into that cliché (not that there's anything wrong with it in itself) when you wrote the record?

I wasn't scared, because I didn't have a critical audience in mind, just myself and my heroes – Byron above all, and on the surface he was an English adventurer on his grand tour, but really he listened to the places he went to, let them speak to him, at least as much as he spoke to them, I think. So there's a great sensitivity in that kind of travelling, which can be seen as a typically arrogant English way of travelling, especially in that era. It has to be said that I didn't travel in the true sense of the word, I mostly just stayed in one place, Rome.

Did you also get to know Renaissance-era instruments and music (dulcimer, recorder) in Rome, or is that a pre-existing fixation?

Yes, I used the recorder and the harpsichord, the theorbo and the chamber organ. Baroque and modern violins, half and half, it was fun. I discovered these instruments through friends who study early music, and through Monteverdi.

Your songs and vocal performances made me think of several English singer-songwriters. But if you had to name your own personal monolith, what would it be?

"The Dreaming" by Kate Bush, yes. And Alex Chilton.

When I hear these beautiful arrangements, this richness of sound you've worked on and put into the album, I always worry, especially nowadays, that it'll be extremely hard to hear the songs live exactly as they are. What's your current line-up? Do you play a more "rock" set, or a more intimate one?

I never worry about recreating the album - I remember going to see Muse and they sounded exactly like the record, and it was boring. The feeling, the energy and something deeper within the songs is what I'm chasing, whatever the arrangement.

Certain instruments are necessary for certain songs, for the tone. So live I play with a band - there are some songs I couldn't do without the full accompaniment.

I really liked your reflection on today's relationship with art, the irreverence you read into Italian people's attitude towards art (which we, however, see as negligence), which you address in the single "How To Recognise A Work Of Art". Can you explain to us in words what it's about, especially from a musical point of view?

This museum-like attitude towards music and art is empty, lifeless, compared with people who live in the time they're in and find value in deeper meaning rather than, routinely, in the artefact itself. For instance, in the Renaissance paintings told stories, sculptures represented gods who were full of contradictions, but were heroes. A lot of people are obsessed with the artist's biography, with their hand, rather than seeing the artist as a vehicle for art, which is how I like to think of it. The artist is beneath what they create, and it should do people good.

On this record your songs have a completely different sound from your work with Race Horses and Radio Luxembourg. And I believe it took you a while to record it, or at least some of the songs were written years ago. How did your ideas develop over these years, and who were the people involved in performing and designing the record?

Iwan Morgan produced the record together with me, and he was very patient and close throughout the whole process - we discussed a lot, and his adventurous spirit and kindness ended up giving the music just the right space to come out. Jimmy Robertson recorded it, and he's amazing - the sound was exactly what I was looking for, and it came naturally, easily, almost without needing to communicate.

I worked with new musicians, Valentina on drums, a great drummer, Lucy Mercer of Stealing Sheep and Euan Hinshelwood of Young Husband, among others. Great violinists and musicians, and Daniel Bradley on drums and percussion, who was in Race Horses with me, was great on all the songs.

Euros Childs has always been a big supporter of yours, ever since your Race Horses days. What does he think of this solo debut of yours?

I love Euros's music, whatever he does, he's a great support. I hope to make another record under the name Cousins with him.

Can you tell us if you have any plans to play shows outside the UK, maybe in Italy at some point? Thanks for your time.

I'll be playing alongside a good friend of mine, Elton John, at the Colosseum in 2043! Haha. Hopefully this autumn, but definitely sometime soon!

Ride the wave of great music

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Lorenzo Righetto, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition