Tom Emlyn releases his new album Rehearsal For The Rain: Scaredycat, Vol.2. The album will be released digitally and on cassette alongside a short story called ‘Phosphorescence’.
Tom Emlyn’s fourth album in two years, Rehearsal For The Rain: Scaredycat Vol. 2 is a self-produced, powerful, fully realised creative statement.
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 quickly– a more mellow, acoustic affair which was also well received. He also released the ‘Scrounger EP’ on Bandcamp last February.
His latest record follows hot on the heels of Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 1, which was released in May 2023. In the same vein as the first volume, Rehearsal For The Rain gathers up lost fragments from years of songwriting and making music. Featuring recent single ‘Double-Crossed’ with its tender vocals, introspective lyrics caressing a daydreaming guitar motif, and lo-fi percussion it explores the darker side of self-reflection to a stripped back Velvet Underground-inspired groove. The album is a dreamlike, lo-fi psychedelic bedroom pop journey, with elements of prog, blues, indie and alternative folk.
‘Rehearsal For the Rain: Scaredycat, Vol 2’ is out now.
Tom Emlyn releases his new single ‘Double-Crossed’, accompanied by a video filmed by Sam Ffoto / Pypi Slysh. From his forthcoming new album Rehearsal For The Rain: Scaredycat, Vol.2, due for release on August 29th, 2024.
Welsh singer-songwriter Tom Emlyn releases his new single, ‘Double-Crossed’ out now. With tender vocals, introspective lyrics caressing a daydreaming guitar motif, and lo-fi percussion it explores the darker side of self-reflection to a stripped back Velvet Underground-inspired groove. Originally written and recorded in lockdown, the song features on his forthcoming album Rehearsal For The Rain: Scaredycat, Vol.2, due for release on August 29th, 2024.
The self-produced record is his fourth solo effort in the space of two years, continuing an impressive streak of creativity and inspiration. The single is accompanied by a video by Sam Ffoto – a series of photographs, taken rapidly enough to give the illusion of film, on a cold January day in Cathays Cemetery, Cardiff.
What is it that pursues our hero through these frigid spaces? Is it a stranger, a friend, or his own shadow? Explore ‘Double-Crossed’ and find out for yourself. A song that explores self-portrayal and small-town paranoia, but not without a sense of warmth and comfort.
Tom Emlyn’s fourth album in two years,Rehearsal For The Rain: Scaredycat Vol. 2is a self-produced, powerful, fully realised creative statement.The album will be released digitally and on cassette, with a launch show at the Moon, Cardiff on August 29th to celebrate.
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 quickly– a more mellow, acoustic affair which was also well received. He also released the ‘Scounger EP’ on Bandcamp last February.
His latest record follows hot on the heels of Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 1, which was released in May 2023. In the same vein as the first volume, Rehearsal For The Rain gathers up lost fragments from years of songwriting and making music.
A dreamlike, lo-fi psychedelic bedroom pop journey, with elements of prog, blues, indie and alternative folk.
Ahead of a raft of upcoming dates, emerging Swansea singer songwriter Tom Emlyn has shared three stripped back bonus b-sides from his new album ‘Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 1’. Listen to solo acoustic versions of ‘Broken Mirror’, ‘It doesn’t Bother Me;’ and The Thing Most Feared In Secret below. .
UK Tour dates 20th July – Nozstock 27th July – The Glad Cafe, Glasgow 28th July – Sketchy Beats Cafe, Edinburgh 12th August – Brecon Jazz/Fringe festival 19th August – Tiny Rebel Newport 6th October – Hippo’s Swansea 27th-29th October – Boia festival St Davids
Tom Emlyn announces his new album ‘Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 1’ out now.
Swansea-born songwriter Tom Emlyn vividly depicts why he is one of the most prolific and inventive songwriters emerging in Wales, with his new album ‘Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 1’. 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 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
27th May – in it together festival Margam 16th June – Cwrw, Carmarthen 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
This year I had the pleasure of being invited to the Focus Wales International Showcase Festival 2023 in Wrexham, to open up the festival with my band Holy Coves and to represent our label Yr Wyddfa Records and Music Scene Wales.
Focus Wales is a fantastic, well thought out music festival which utilises the whole of Wrexham to show you the town in all it’s glory. Between Focus Wales and everything that is happening with Wrexham AFC this place is really thriving and the music scene is so vibrant.
What Andy Jones and his team have created is really something special. The network available there for bands, musicians, artists, managers, promoters and anyone working in the music industry is second to none. It reminds me of the South By Southwest festival in Texas. It really is a brilliant festival.
On the Thursday we had the honour of opening up the festival at The Parish with my band Holy Coves, playing to a packed out venue which blew me away. The Parish is such an important venue, the grassroots of music and is used regularly on the tour circuit by bands and musicians all across the UK.
Our top picks in no particular order were South Wales’ Tom Emlyn, Wales’ HourGlvss, Canadas Pillow Fite, Wrexhams very own The Columbians, Brighton’s Squid and our brand new signing Sister Envy from North Wales, who played their final gig as The Pastimes and announced they have signed to Yr Wyddfa Records and have changed their name to Sister Envy.
I managed to get over to The Parish early hours of Sunday morning to watch the Declan Swans play to a packed out, bouncing venue singing along to every word. Being a Wrexham AFC fan this was a very special moment for me. It was the perfect ending to a fantastic Festival.
Scott Marsden #MusicSceneWales @MusicSceneWales musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com
Tom Emlyn releases his new single ‘It Doesn’t Bother Me’. The follow-up to ‘Broken Mirror’ and ‘Like a Cigarette’, it’s the last of three singles leading up to the album ‘Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol 1’ released on the 5th of May 2023.
Engineered by Randell Denning, BBC studios Swansea in 2018 ‘It Doesn’t Bother Me’ rattles with introspection, as Emlyn sketches out nightmarish visions of characters who lose themselves in the pursuit of success. Amidst a scorched strum of fuzzy guitars, battered acoustics and skippy keys and synths. It’s a raw earworm that tries to throw off the shadow of doubt.
Emlyn says: “This song is from the mind of an unreliable narrator, trying to convince himself of his own aloofness as much as he is the listener. It paints a nightmare picture of self-doubt, anxiety, dead-end jobs, bad decisions, time running out. Schizophrenic images of audible lights in the engine yard. Losing your real self in the pursuit of money, recognition, anything. The masks we wear to convince ourselves and others of our resilience.”
“Honky-tonk Bob, mentioned in the lyrics, was a real person I met who played around the open mic nights of North Wales. He used to play amateurish piano, with his foot tapping a rudimentary beat on a hi hat with some kind of stuffed animal attached to it. The last I heard of him, he’d joined the army. A lost and misguided soul. This song tries to use sarcasm and absurdity to overcome uncertainty and dread, even if that involves a certain amount of self-deception. The keyboards and bass synth on the track were all done in the moment and improvised in one take.”
Swansea-born songwriter Tom Emlyn vividly depicts why he is one of the most prolific and inventive songwriters emerging 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 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 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
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, Carmarthen
17th June – Cwrw (solo record shop in-store to promote new album)
17th June – Elysium, Swansea (to promote new album)
Swansea born Tom Emlyn is one of the most prolific and inventive songwriters to emerge from Wales. Tom 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. Tom has been comapred to Bob Dylan or Elliot Smith.
Emlyn says: “This was a song I wrote after I came back from traveling in about 2015. It was a bit of a prototype for some of my other songs like Empire or Under the Weather, which try to use the Welsh landscape as a metaphor for a breakup. It’s not really as biographical as it sounds, there’s a lot of fiction in there too. It also deals with the choices you make in life and realising that there are many ways to look at a situation. It’s quite conversational and imagistic.”
Tom also announces details of a new album to be released on the 5th of May, ‘Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol. 15’. This album is a treasure trove of captivating songs dating to between 2016 – 2018.
Of the album Tom says: “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.”
Indie Revolution 