Bill Ryder-Jones is a man with issues. Many of them can be traced back to a tragedy during a family vacation in Wales, when 7-year-old Bill saw his two-year-old brother Daniel fall off a cliff. The singer-songwriter from West Kirby (near Liverpool) dealt with it - in his own way - on the albums he released after leaving
The Coral in 2005. The song Daniel on the fragile-sounding
West Kirby County… Primary (2015), a picture on the cover of the even sadder follow-up Yawn (2018)... It wasn't until this sixth solo album that Ryder-Jones, 40 now, found room for some optimism. 'There's something great about life,' he sings in It's Today Again, for example. To add "but there's something not quite right. Yet Iechyd Da sounds purifying rather than depressing. That's because of beautiful songs like This Can't Go On (which is reminiscent of Mercury Revs masterpiece Deserter's Songs from 1998) and the uplifting Nothing To Be Done, one of four songs featuring the children's choir from The Bidston Avenue Primary School. Iechyd Da, by the way, means "cheers," in Wales... (RME)more
