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Apr 20, 2021 By Mark Redfern Photography by Mark James

Gruff Rhys, Welsh frontman of Super Furry Animals, is releasing a new solo album, Seeking New Gods, on May 21 via Rough Trade. Now he has shared a new song from it, “Can’t Carry On,” via a video for the track. In a press release Rhys says “Can’t Carry On” is about “when reality catches up with delusion and the search for a guiding hand out of a heavy situation.” Watch it below, followed by Rhys’ upcoming UK tour dates (yes, he has tour dates).

Previously Rhys shared Seeking New Gods’ first single, “Loan Your Loneliness,” also via a video. “Loan Your Loneliness” was one of our Songs of the Week (coming in at #1). Long-time Rhys collaborator Mark James art directed the album and directed both the “Loan Your Loneliness” video and the “Can’t Carry On” one and the two videos are interconnected.

Seeking New Gods is Rhys’ seventh solo album. It was recorded following a U.S. tour with his band. Mario C (Beastie Boys) mixed the album in Los Angeles.

Apparently, Seeking New Gods started off as a biography of an active volcano, Mount Paektu, on the Chinese-North Korean border. A previous press release explained that the more Rhys wrote, the more “he began to reflect on the inhuman timescale of the peak’s existence and the intimate features that have allowed mythologies to be built around it over centuries. Both the mountain and the songs became more and more personal to him as time went on.”

Rhys further explained: “The album is about people and the civilizations, 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.”

In February Rhys released a new book, the amusingly titled Resist Phony Encores!, which a press release described as a “selective memoir.” For the book Rhys worked with designer Mark James, who provided Xeroxed graphics and doctored photos. The book included anecdotes from his life and also featured Rhys’ cue cards that he has used in live performances for 15 years now. Rhys did a performance version of Resist Phony Encores! as a “one-man slide show” at the Edinburgh Festival in 2018.

In 2014 Rhys released the book American Interior, which accompanied the album of the same name (there was also a film and mobile app). Last August, on Record Store Day, Rhys put out a new solo album of sorts, (Don’t) Welcome the Plague as a Blessing / The Babelsberg Basement Files, which was a companion piece to his 2018 album, Babelsberg, which was recorded with the 72-piece BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The new take featured the original versions of the songs, sans orchestra. The album was previewed via a video for the new album’s version of “Negative Vibes.” Rhys released another solo album, Pang!, in 2019, also via Rough Trade.

Read our 16th Annual Artist Survey interview with Gruff Rhys.

Read our 2015 interview with Gruff Rhys about American Interior.

Gruff Rhys UK Tour Dates:

5/21 – Islington, UK @ Islington Town Hall
5/22 – Brighton, UK @ Chalk
7/2-7/4 – Swadlincote, UK @ Timber Festival 2021
9/3 – 9/5 – Moseley, UK @ Moseley Folk & Arts Festival 2021
10/7 – Wrexham, UK @ Focus Wales 2021
10/21 – Sheffield, UK @ Crookes Club
10/22 – Cambridge, UK @ Storey’s Field Centre
10/23 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall
10/26 – Oxford, UK @ O2 Academy 2 Oxford
10/27 – London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
10/29 – Limerick, IE @ Dolan’s Warehouse
10/30 – Dublin, IE @ Liberty Hall Theatre
11/01 – Bath, UK @ Komedia Bath
11/02 – Southsea, UK @ Wedgewood Rooms
11/03 – Norwich, UK @ Norwich Arts Centre

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