Melin Melyn - Mill On The Hill

Be it by coincidence or design, the timing of Melin Melyn’s debut album is stunningly apt: landing just as the UK finally begins to thaw, ‘Mill On The Hill’ is the sonic equivalent of the first day of Spring, an audible encapsulation of daffodils blooming and tentative hope. Centred around the Welsh outfit’s eponymous Yellow Mill (the English translation of Melin Melyn), it’s also the product of world-building on an ambitious, impressively-realised scale, using pastoral motifs and melodic meanderings to transport us to a place in which music is prized over all.

Between sun-drenched jangle-pop (‘Vitamin D’), playful prog-rock breakdowns (‘Fantastic Food’), and peppy psychedelia(‘Master Plan’), the record offers a much-needed injection of whimsy into a landscape too often shrouded in self-aggrandisation. And yet these moments of freewheeling fun - in particular, the ‘Crocodile Rock’ swing of ‘The Pigeon & The Golden Egg’ or the toe-tapping hoedown of ‘Running On MT’’s latter half - are still offset by gentler moments of respite, leaving room for the traditions and tongue of the band’s beloved homeland to take centre stage (see the delicate country vignette of ‘Derek’ or the woozy embrace of ‘18-30’). The epitome of committing to the bit - and pulling it off with conviction - ‘Mill On The Hill’ finds Melin Melyn unequivocally (and unsurprisingly) in their own lane once again.