- We Had Plans Gintis 2:42
If Gintis are a sleeping giant of North Walian wonky psych pop, you could be forgiven for thinking the Abergele Goliath had slipped into a coma in recent years. Signs of life came with singles Dennis, O My Little Malcontent and Four Movements – all of which gained BBC radio play and sparked excitement among the band’s loyal following of devotees. But a decade has passed without a long player collection of their sentimental songs for sentimental people.
Hope Is All We Have signals the end of a long wait. Lured by the siren song of glorious set closer Now I Know, legendary Merseysider Bill Ryder-Jones has taken on producer duties to capture the lightning of a dozen lyrically dextrous and heart-bursting missives.
Sessions in his Wirral studio YAWN have birthed the third Gintis album and forged a profound friendship. Ryder-Jones has nurtured the band’s charming eccentricities while harnessing the emotional triumphs of songs which were completed amidst tragedy for several members of the band.
In early 2020, the band’s frontman Carl Roberts lost his sister Laura – wife of guitarist Jools Neale. The Covid-19 pandemic coincided with Roberts and Neale providing end of life care for Gintis’s biggest champion as she battled breast cancer. Around the same time the brother of Gintis drummer Gaz xxx lost his life to cardio-myopathy. Work on the album was understandably shelved.
‘Music is the only thing I understand and the only thing that understands me,’ Roberts told the presenters of Songs From A Padded Envelope podcast at the beginning of 2022. With Gintis on hold, the Liverpool-based musician continued to lend his talents to various projects as he navigated the trials presented to him in the new decade. As he joined Merseyside stalwarts By The Sea and formed a new band with Bill Ryder-Jones and By The Sea’s Liam Power, Gintis brethren Kyle Lee, Jools Neale and Joe Booker worked on their own projects in the form of Cow, The Holy Gloam and Telefair respectively. But those twelve tracks were burning a hole in his hard drive.
With help from Ryder-Jones and record label Mai68, Hope Is All We Have is finally set to see the light of day.
While abstract tales of museum exhibits and opportunist mystics provide listeners the opportunity to unpick tantalizingly oblique lyrics, Gintis’s melodies will buoy the heaviest of hearts. The songs on Hope Is All We Have are stars in a constellation of heartbreak, unbreakable bonds and unabashed romance. It’s smelling salts for the soul.
SOURCE: Official Bio
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