The title does not lie on Gruff Rhys’ new album, Sadness Sets Me Free. Rhys paints a distorted, dystopian picture of his future – a future where he accepts the good with the bad (like being a bad friend on “Bad Friend”) and the sad with the happy. Sadness Sets Me Free spends time covering country, blues, rock, and folk music with a cacophony of strings, pianos, drums, horns, and guitars to bring about a feeling of freedom in the face of sadness.
The instrumentals across Sadness Sets Me Free are grand, infectious, adventurous and frankly, freeing. The opener and title track is a great example of this. Rhys’ lyrics about a sadness following him through life are set over an intoxicating country swing, an ingenious way to start this album. The lead single, “Celestial Candyfloss,” has grand string flourishes and melodies reminiscent of Electric Light Orchestra. This track describes “Love as the final destiny,” and the willingness to forego barriers to achieve it: “Chasing it like a park ranger / Shoot for / Celestial candy floss / Licking it like there’s no danger.”
The first seven tracks of Sadness Sets Me Free all bring something to the table stylistically and metaphorically. The hand drums and groove on “They Sold My Home To Build A Skyscraper” and the progressive build of “Peace Signs” all go over wonderfully. The album falters towards the end, on tracks “Cover Up The Cover Up” and “I Tendered My Resignation.” These two are slow burns that do not hit the emotional stride that they aim for. The singing on the latter does not do the instrumental enough justice, the former brings in political themes that feel ill-conceived and out-of-line with the personality of this album. The closer “I’ll Keep Singing” wraps the album up beautifully, however. This track features a beautiful and swirling arrangement of pianos with incredible vocal harmonies and blaring horns. It brings the album back to its initial sense of escapism and freedom exhibited all along the first half of the album.
Sadness Sets Me Free is not only a cohesive set of songs about Rhys experience with mental health, but it is also an incredible collection of tracks that can be taken out and enjoyed on their own. Each song is contained in its own world – its own genre and sound – that features its own dystopian story of sadness.
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