This third solo album from Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys is apparently inspired by, and takes its title from, the raw material used to construct his recent art installation of the same name – small plastic bottles of complimentary shampoo hoarded from various hotels all over the world. “Having never kept a journal these items have become like diary entries,” he recently explained, “triggering memories of all those buildings and random people I’ve met and inspiring some of the songs on the album.”
Thankfully, despite the rather unlikely source of inspiration, the music is neither plastic nor disposable (though Andy Votel’s production is extremely clean). Mostly recorded in north Wales, with much of the instrumentation played by Rhys himself, these thirteen timeless pop songs are gloriously cinematic in scope.
Tropically imbued album opener ‘Shark Ridden Waters’ sounds like the shimmering soundtrack to a ‘60s art house movie – groovily retro but delightfully frothy. Some of the vocals are difficult to decipher, but there appears to be a broad spectrum of themes. The mariachi-tinged ‘Sensations in the Dark’ celebrates discovering the power of music, green politics are dealt with on ‘Conservation Conversation’, golden circles and inequality on the wailing guitar tinged ‘Patterns Of Power’, colonization on the stomping ‘Christopher Columbus’.
There’s a few love songs here too – the saccharine ‘Honey All Over’ (“How do you come back if you’ve never been away?/ How do you pay back the welcome you overstay?”) and beautiful ballad ‘If We Were Words (We Would Rhyme)’ are definite standouts. He duets with the golden voiced El Perro Del Mar on the humorous ‘Space Dust #2’ – a tale of a brief affair at a business seminar (“You upped and left without warning/ I had to work in the morning”).
Welcome to the Hotel Shampoo. Such a bubbly place.