# MELYS: Rumours + Curses

I never did really see the point of album reviews. You are either going to buy the album or you're not, but I figured I'd do this anyhow just incase you are undecided. This album isn't the easiest thing to get hold of in the world as nowhere seems to be selling it. However, you can order it and have it fairly quickly which I would thoroughly recommend as it is very good. The press release describes it as "12 intense, fiercely personal pop songs," but that sells it short, but in six words you can't convey the enormity of Melys' achievement so I'll try with quite a few more.
It kicks off with Achilles Heel, a vicious, accusary bitter song which starts with a quite jarring wucka wucka wucka noise that sounds like a hovering spaceship, but there are lots of nice tinkly noises like fairies later on. Paul's vocals can be heard in the background and the whole thing has a good tune, and like all of Melys' songs the lyrics are strong, even if they are a personal attack on someone, "it's you that's weak, it's you that's scared", "persistent parasite". I'm glad it's not me. This happens again in Hope You Cry Yourself To Sleep ("sometimes wish you'd die").

Next up is Diwifr, Melys' first single with Pinnacle. Being a non Welsh speaker I have no idea what the title means but it's not all that important as it's still stonkingly good and I like listening to it. The lyrics are. split into Welsh and English and the tunes change with the language. The welsh bit sounds like a soundtrack to a public be- heading in it's starkness and sinisterness, which happens a lot on this album, like in Misunderstand Me but sometimes that's a good thing. The English bit is cheerier with more pop melodies, despite the words ("no more making me feel ashamed... free from your derision, mind games and obsessions")

Acid Queen is as corrosive and stinging as the title suggests, about a man who cheated on the teller of the tale, and the woman he cheated with. It's a scary song- "I want to kill him/ gouge out his eyes/ write my name across his face with Stanley knives for what he's done" and displays all of the hatred and viciousness of Achilles Heel and foretells of the possessiveness of Lemming. Almost all the songs on Rumours and Curses share these emotions, which in the hands of a lesser lyricist, would have the distinct possibility of slipping into something horribly teenage. Here it definitely does not. Melys are not teenagers, evident in their degree of maturity and insight and the tunes are always good which lifts the lyrics, if ever they do get slightly rocky, which is very rare. Irrational is maybe a better way to describe it, fitting certainly as everyone is irrational, especially with people they love and people who have hurt them. This is a disturbing , and my mother would say disturbed, album. It is frightening to the core, down to the very cover which is a photo of a man gagged with a piece of gaffer's tape.

On reading the inlay card for the album I discovered that Paul writes a lot of the lyrics, and he and Andrea write the others together. This does make a difference. It shouldn't, but it does. It makes you question things a whole lot more than if you just think it's all written by a woman which I thought to be the case, because it's so insightful and perceptive, for want of better words. It's so right. I can identify with it. All the tales of relationships and the difficulties involved within them read like something from a feminine point of view yet the reality is that possibly they aren't. Men see things the same way which challenges, certainly my own, preconceived ideas of how men think, and are, and this is carried on with Painfully Thin which I'd hazard a guess is about being anorexic, not purely because the person is 'painfully thin', as some people are naturally, or they just don't like to eat; like my brother, but because of the strength of the character and it's apparent feelings of superiority and dismissiveness towards others that is so evident in anorexics in general, "you're stupid good intentions are insufficient now" being a prime example. Paul and Andrea are both extremely thin. I have a video of Melys on "Garaj," a programme that used to be on S4C that I can pick up on my mum and dad's TV with Carys looking like she'd snap too. I wouldn't like to say one, or even more, of them were '1anorexic because I could be wrong, and I sincerely hope I am because it's a horrible horrible thing and it ruins lives; not just for the person but for !those who care about them. And if I were to name the wrong person if another is/was they may get very offended and consequently loose a lot of weight just to prove a point and I don't want to be responsible for that ' (and this is all going by the remote possibility that any of Melys may actually ever read this). But anyhow, if, and I speculate if, Painfully Thin is written by Paul then why does it make a' difference? T guess it's 'because anorexia in men is far less common than in women, and the only figure I have to go on is Richey, and David Bowie too I guess but I don't know much about him. It is unfair to set Paul up as the new Richey so to speak which I know I kind of started to do based on stupid reasons like his long sleeve shirts, his hair cut (like Richey circa Gold Against the Soul complete with the single gold hoop earing) and skeletal body. It's not fair on Richey and it's not fair on Paul, and I have stopped doing it. But the idea of Paul writing this track gives the whole piece a different perspective which is quite, well, thought provoking.
I think I just made a big deal of something that may be nothing.
Hatchepsut is another title, I have no idea about. I don't think it's Welsh though. It is a very gentle song with none of the aggression of Achilles Heel or Acid Queen, but is filled with the usual self doubt and disbelief, ("I'm no oil painting of a face" which isn't true as all of Melys are very good looking, if not beautiful in some cases) Paul's vocals can also be heard in this too which is nice because live he is pretty much inaudible except in between songs.

Wade Away (For The Last Time) is one of my favourites. It 'has' a constant drum beat and there is no singing until well into the song. It is a very worrying song. I don't know Melys but I feel alarmed at Paul and Andrea's state of mind (them being the lyricists) and I do hope that they are ok. It says "soon I'll sleep... for the last... time" which is alarming as it denotes suicide, or maybe I am being melodramatic. Possibly it means Soon I'll sleep for the last time- at your house/ with you.~ I don't know. I hope so, and then goes onto describe riding the morphine waves and seeing pictures of waterfalls and farms which immediately brings to mind images of private clinics and hospitals for some reason. There are radar sounding beeps in this songs and the 'words "now you're golden" would suggest something celestial. I will admit that I am currently obsessed with the idea of spaceships and star men and interplanetary travel but this whole album seems to be like the journey of a spacecraft which starts to hover at the beginning in Achilles Heel then takes off at the end of Matroyshka
I loved Lemming the first time I heard it. Even my friend grinned knowingly at me when she heard it too in a kind of You're Loving This Aren't You With All It's Fuckedupedness and I was. Spasmodic, inconsistent, erratic, a touch psychotic, unsettled but most definitely not schizophrenic or crazy. Just the kind of stuff I like. Mental illness is so, I don't know what the word is. Interesting is wrong because it's not when it's you or someone you love, then it just hurts really bad. Intriguing I guess. Compelling, even if that is bad taste. How many people started watching Eastenders because Joe was wrapping things in tinfoil? and that scene where a crowd gathered to witness him being carted off after being sectioned would happen, does happen. People are drawn to it because it's out of control, like people are drawn to car smashes or fires. It's a frightening, obsessive and possessive song, "you don't know what you let yourself in for," "I'm gonna follow you everywhere you go," "don't touch my things 'cos you know I'll be coming back." The line "I'll hurt myself then blame you" is casually flung in, echoing the idea of self harm abuse, whatever, in Painfully Thin and it also shows a further edge to the scheming, manipulative nature of people that do that, openly admitting here that it affects others- "I'll blame you," and a "suicide that was bound to fail" which confirms my fears for their safety, I s'pose, without meaning to sound wanky. Their first EP was called Fragile and that seems very apt. And then the next track is called when You Put Leonard Cohen On which I guess just about says it all, the man to kill yourself to. Or not.

I really really like him and I listen to his stuff a lot, especially his greatest hits which I got for my birthday a couple of years ago, and I listen to him all the time, not just when things are going wrong, but a lot of people don't. Two of my uncles, on separate occasions made me switch him off because they couldn't cope with it, and my next door neighbour refuses to have it played in the house. I guess Melys fall into this camp. I find him quite uplifting and beautiful, but the title to this song made me smile on a grim day. The song is beautiful. It is very gentle, and, soothing almost, with it's tranquil keyboards. I think Mr. Cohen himself would approve. (I wonder if he's heard it? I guess not as he's busy up some mountain being a Zen monk). It's about a crumbling relationship but is just sadly resigned. Ambulance Chaser is about an entirely different stage in a relationship and is the tale of a very emotionally dependent person (the parasite in Achilles Heel?) and the person who loves them. It is cynical in a kind of You Only Love Me Because I Am A Fuck- Up And You Get Of f On That type way with no thankyou's or your wrong, just that's the way it is. It's a nice tune though even if it does say "being safe is what I dream" which just seems to scream psychiatric system crap. Perhaps I'm being unfair.

The album ends on Matroyshka which is full of deep resonance and a male Welsh voice choir. And we learn "you make my heart sting... this ache enfolds me" and that there is nothing we can do. That is just how it is. I wasn't overly struck on this track on first listening but the more I hear it the more I like it which is a lot now. And the spaceship seems to fly off at the end with the whole thing finishing with a dzzzzzzzzzzzz sound which is a good way to end an album and doesn't scare the pants off you like This Is Hardcore when Jarvis says bye.

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