HMS MORRIS

However odd it felt being back, it must have been even more strange for HMS Morris, playing their first in-person gig since early 2020 and clearly delighted to be back on the stage and in front of a real audience. The band have been operating as a two piece since the departure of their drummer before the pandemic, so the night was an opportunity for them to showcase a re-worked version of some of their songs. The lockdown may have brought a temporary halt to their face-to-face performances, but it clearly hasn’t taken any of the energy away from the band. There is still a frenetic pace to the staging and performance of songs such as ‘Corff’, which slides effortlessly between dreamy electro-beats and upbeat pop.

As ever, Heledd Watkins’ stage presence ramped up the energy levels, while the relaxed interplay between Watkins and her counterpart, Sam Roberts, lent the evening a celebratory feel. The band had spoken in advance about wanting the gig to have a party vibe and revisiting songs such as ‘Interior Design’ and ‘Mother’ definitely set the tone for a night which had a distinctly triumphant undercurrent. In the socially-distanced space of the Weston Studio, the combination of synthesizers and visual art worked together to create an almost psychedelic atmosphere at times; eerie and laden with meaning.

The re-adjustment to being back in front of an audience didn’t seem to take long for the duo who are clearly in their element when fully absorbed in their performance. It’s difficult to resist being drawn into their commitment and obvious enjoyment of the sound they create. For all the changes they may have made as they transitioned to a two piece, the band have retained their characteristic spontaneity, creativity and playfulness. The fun is clearly still there; as the set drew to a close, Watkins piggy-backed Roberts off the stage and out of the studio as the music gradually faded out and the lights darkened. No doubt that sense of fun will remain as HMS Morris moves towards a new chapter in its evolution, becoming a four piece group from later this month.

Setting the pitch for the evening was accomplished support act, Teddy Hunter. Having recently been announced as the Rising 2021 winner ahead of this year’s Green Man Festival, Hunter performed a selection of her songs which showcased the strength of her voice, as well as her ability to capture, and hold, the attention of a room. Hearing Hunter play live it’s impossible not to be struck by both the dreamlike quality of her sound and the way it builds to a crescendo which manages to be both powerful and soothing at the same time. A well-chosen act to support HMS Morris, Hunter’s set proved an effective opener for an evening which was as much about the visual and sensory experience of sound, as the music itself.

If the starting pistol has been fired for live Welsh music to make its long-awaited return, there is no better reminder of what makes music from Wales so unique. Experimental, full of life, passion and with a healthy dose of hedonism thrown in, the combined forces of HMS Morris and Teddy Hunter are the ideal example of a Welsh music scene which has spent the pandemic waiting impatiently in the wings and is now ready to make a buoyant return to centre stage. - Wales Arts Review

When BBC Radio Cymru commissioned HMS Morris to record new songs for their ‘Sesiwn Ty‘ house sessions/sessions from home strand at the start of lockdown number one during spring, it spurred the band into action. Precisely the thing they needed, according to songwriter, singer and guitarist Heledd Watkins.

‘The session set the tone for writing for the rest of the year really,’ she tells me over the phone from her and Sam Roberts’ (bass/ synth/ loops/ backing vocals) home in Cardiff.

2019, either a year ago or several decades depending on whether you view it through the constraints of the pandemic lens, saw the experimental and all embracing art rock band’s second album ‘Inspirational Talks’, like its predecessor ‘Interior Design’, nominated for the Welsh Music Prize. And that autumn had them take in the delights of Japan, and Birkenhead’s inaugural Future Yard festival.

But like most artists these last 10 months have been online activity mostly. The good news is, a 5-track EP ‘Pastille’, written over the course of the last year but recorded here in 2020, is released tomorrow (Friday 4 Dec).

As we talk, Sam recalls the house being turned into a studio as they made the EP, and how they both took a relaxed attitude to the lockdown experience.

‘For us it was a real freedom at the start,’ he admits. ‘There was nothing you were supposed to be doing instead of making music.’

This morning the pair are taking a quick break from filming the video for ‘Myfyrwyr Rhyngwladol’ (International Students) from the EP. They’ve been out and about around City Road in Cardiff, where they live. The song, I’m told, started as a reaction to the area taken over by the 21st century urban blight that is the expansion of student accomodation.

‘They are ugly,’ is Sam’s firm analysis.

‘Not the students, the buildings!’ Heledd laughs.

I put to them that ‘Myfyrwyr Rhyngwladol‘ has an interesting spin on how we view students in our cities across the UK in modern times. We’re so accustomed to signing petitions about student flats replacing buildings and altering landscapes we hold dear, sometimes we forget – how does one put it – that students are people too.

‘We’re thinking more about them as people, it is a brave thing to go to a new country,’ says Sam of the song. ‘It’s adventurous, embracing or involving yourself with another culture and putting yourself into their story. And also you’re at that time in your life as a student where you’re learning, you’re there to learn and you’re open to new ideas and developing yourself. It’s an approach to life it would be good if people maintained for a bit longer in their adult life, we thought.’

I share a personal memory of when I first moved to Liverpool to go to university, as a wool from the Lancashire sticks and having ‘fuck off back to where you come from, student’ bellowed at me from a charming local. Things have change since then, native populations are more welcoming and canny about what students bring with them, economically at least.

‘You cling on to what you’ve got,’ reckons Heledd of the those resenting the student accommodation. ‘You’ve worked so hard to get to your house, your family, everything, so if anything interrupts that then you automatically think bad of it. But it’s good to know why these things are happening around you.’

The EP has gifted us a bright and shiny end to the year, the songs ‘Babanod’, ‘Poetry’, ‘Myfyrwyr Rhyngwladol’ and ‘Partypooper’ deliciously drip fed to us over these last months. It’s a collection capturing the band’s view of the world as it is around them at the moment.

Supreme latin-electro-pop banger ‘Partypooper’ on the EP was recorded at home, like the rest of the songs, but a spirited escape to North Wales to record brass courtesy of Owain Gruffudd and Gwyn Owen from Band Pres Llareggub (Owain also arranged the brass) when lockdown eased a little, turned this reflection of imposter syndrome into what Sam describes as ‘a full party’.

The up nature of the music is juxtaposed with the lyrical theme, and proves highly effective. After all, who is in the mood for picking at the scab of negativity right now.

‘It started from the thought that musicians when they don’t have gigs or releases get a bit depressed and miserable. And they need a fix of being adored on stage to feel good about themselves. It’s all about that depressive patch and the little voice you have in your head telling you that you’re not good enough or you should go and do something else,’ says Heledd. - God is in the tv

Well, I only know two things: Heledd Watson has a sublime voice that can touch the heavens and then descend to the bowls of the Earth and sing like the volcanic fires that fuel Gaia’s soul. I mean, a lot of singers can sing a phonebook, but this woman can sing the phonebook of Welsh names and places in Swansea, Wales. And I also know that’s a tough thing to do because I strolled the city with a map, and for a moment, felt a sense of location because the street on which I stood had a unique and unmistakable name with way too many consonants, nary a vowel to be found, and odd combinations of letters w, y, and ff. But then I realized a whole lot of street names on my Swansea map also lacked the usual vowel expectation and had a whole lot of the letters w, y, and ff.

So, yeah, expect English and Welsh lyrics and vocals, which like the very music, manages to cross-pollination colors.

The album begins with the short “(control).” This instrumental, along with “(neutral),” and “(live),” all of which combined barely reach the five-minute mark, create a prog unity within the flow of the album. Sam Roberts plays these atmospheric keys upon which the album floats and wobbles up, down, and sometimes, sideways into purgatory.

But “Inspiration Talks” rocks with Alex Moller’s percussion, while Heledd sings and soars into an Eastern whirlwind, with background vocals that sandblast the memory of Kate Bush’s last album Fifty Words for Snow from memory. Yes, I love Kate Bush, but this album is fresh fire with equal vocal power. Fans of Never Forever and The Dreaming should give this attention, although nothing here really touches the extremes of “Get Out of My House,” because, ultimately, this is much more of a band album, that, as my friend, Kilda Defnut, said, is “rock music that pops.” (Or vice versa.)

There are absolutely lovely folky bits: “Arth” is celestial cathedral choral stuff that bleeds beauty. “Cyrff” is pop-folk that is off-kilter and humorous. And “Corff” is slow, beautiful, and persistent in its melodic confession. There is a bit of the sacred in all of this music.

And speaking of sacred, some Dead Sea Scroll certainly must contain the musical notation for “Dai at Night,” which, seriously, equals the prog weirdness of Genesis’ “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe).” Now, that’s saying a cosmos of a record spin; but yeah, the tune has catchy humor, but then it turns on a six-pence and erupts into Procol Harum “Salty Dog” drama.

Did I say that I love the song?

“Mother” is deep psychological stuff. My mother, your mother, Elvis Presley’s mother; or as (the great) Ian Hunter once sang, “I wish I was your mother.” The song makes clever use of weird background voices. It’s all very shrink couch odd, but a wonderful guitar solo makes everything quite sane, thank you! And the same is true about “Morbid Mind,” with its staccato beat and utterly bewitched banshee vocal, wonderful pulsing bassline, and even more weird voices emanating from those before-mentioned volcanic fires that fuel Gaia’s soul.

Thankfully, the final song, “(On Our Way from) Earth,” provides a viable escape with a melody and a dream-like vocal that simply wants to circle the warm universe with words, with rock ‘n’ roll, with a slipstream from a “starship far away from Earth,” and quite frankly, everything else that bumps the sun, sings with equal Welsh and English beauty, pops and rocks and rocks and pops, bends the musical relativity curb, adds weird spoken bits, and then plays its heart out and into the hybrid grooves with the simple message, “It’s time to go.”

Or, as my Google Welsh translation tells me, “Mae’n amser mynd.”

Now, in all fairness, many years ago, I sat in a public transport bus (on my way to, all places, Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey) with Welsh school children and simply absorbed their native language conversations. And all those Welsh kids, with their too many consonants, vowels nary to be found, and odd combinations of the letters w, y, and ff, spoke with a beautiful clarity, a clairvoyance seldom found, except, perhaps, in a public transport bus filled with kids who are excited and just talk right out loud; because, as The Who once told us all, the kids are alright.

So, as any language will tell us, “Mae’r plant yr iawn.”

This record matches that Welsh school children voiced beauty and “dizzy raptures” I heard, many years ago, in the kids’ eager talk, on the way, oddly enough, in a bus to Tintern Abbey, so many years ago. -

HMS Morris have been creating some of the most interesting art-rock and electro-pop music in the UK for a number of years now and with Poetry and their previous single Babanod the band are showing no signs of slowing down or treading water. - Louder than War

Arts news
Independent Band Abroad: Throwing ourselves into a musical abyss
HMS Morris’s Heledd Watkins details her experience performing at the European minority languages festival SUNS

17.01.2023 - Wales Arts International