It wasn’t until 2015 that Red River Dialect hit our radar with Tender Gold And Gentle Blue, an album that came with a credible endorsement from M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger – “Theirs is a focused longing, a confusion of soul, a visionary lamentation”.
Next month sees the release of their fifth album Abundance Welcoming Ghosts on 27 September via Paradise of Bachelors. The label tell us that the album was recorded in rural Southwest Wales shortly before songwriter and singer David Morris moved to a remote Buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia. As far as the music is concerned they add that the record captures the band finding fresh joy in their music, relaxing more deeply into a natural, playful confidence: tangling with the thickets, wading in the river, digging the peat, and disappearing into the mountains.
Well, they say the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, listen to the lead single ‘Snowdon’ named after the highest Welsh mountain peak (“This is the closest point in Wales to heaven / The closest point to heaven in Wales”) and featuring Joan Shelly.
On the personal and Arthurian themes in the song Morris adds: “The giant Rhitta Gawr lays buried there having been slain by King Arthur; not before he had gobbled up all the local sheep, killed two dozen Welsh kings and had woven an immense cape from all of the beards he had shorn them of. I grew up a few miles from Tintagel Castle in Cornwall and have an abiding affection for claims that this was THE Camelot, and that Arthur and Merlin were clearly Cornish, and not from Wales, as other tales tell, and definitely not from Somerset.”
Earlier this week Morris also revealed an ‘official solo performance’ video for track ‘Blue Sparks’:
Pre-Order the album here: http://smarturl.it/PoB46
Photo Credit: Alice Jackson