Bi-lingual Welsh songwriter Y DAIL (aka Huw Griffiths) is pleased to reveal his new single ‘Silly Boy’, released 26th February 2024 on all good digital service providers.
Commenting on the single, Griffiths says: “I wrote and recorded ‘Silly Boy’ when I was 17, listening to XTC and reading Carson McCullers. The lyric is about a weird imagined encounter between a young city boy and a mystical, druidic slate-mining villager in North Wales.”
The track was BBC Radio Wales DJ Adam Walton’s ‘Long Song’ of the week, and is the latest to be taken from his forthcoming debut album Teigr released on 5th April 2024. Griffiths describes the record as “a collection of songs written in my bedroom between the ages of 16 and 19, high on lapsang souchong tea and jaffa cakes.”
Y Dail (‘The Leaves’) is the musical project of 20-year-old Huw Griffiths from Pontypridd, South Wales, writing in both Welsh and English. Starting in 2020, the band have released a string of singles which have received excellent reviews and single-of-the-week awards on music blogs and websites.
Forthcoming debut album Teigr has been several years in the making, and is partly inspired by Griffiths’s love of 70s Welsh-language pop he remembers from school discos and his parents’ record collection. He also cites Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, Joe Meek, Television and early Prefab Sprout as influences.
With the album’s completion and release delayed by the inevitable pandemic story, 2021 saw the deceptively young Griffiths juggling finalising the record with studying for his A Levels, eventually putting the finishing touches to the record with producer Kris Jenkins (ex Super Furry Animals) at Grangetown Studios, Cardiff in the lull following.
Since then, Marc Riley has championed the band on his BBC 6Music show, calling Griffiths’ songs “perfect pop”, and national treasure Gruff Rhys has called the band “magnificent”, with Y Dail previously performing a radio session for BBC 6music’s Huw Stephens, who has been a long term fan.
Elsewhere, BBC Wales DJ Adam Walton has been a firm supporter, with Y Dail winning second place in Rhys Mwyn‘s Radio Cymru Alternative Chart 2021, and tipped by God Is In The TV Zine for their Sound of 2021. Their 2022 standalone single ‘Whizz Kids’ was released via much-loved Welsh language label Libertino Records (Adwaith, CHROMA, Sister Wives) and featured on Domino Records’ Sound System playlist.
Previously performing live as a duo with his multi-instrumentalist younger sister Elen and now with his live band filled out into a quartet, Griffiths’ disarmingly mature, charming, and precise lofi pop wins fans wherever he goes, previously supporting Cardiff natives Papur Wal and appearing at the Swansea Fringe.
This year, Y Dail will be playing at FA Wales Festival and Wales Goes Pop Festival, plus support slots alongside Blue Amber and Wakey Wakey Rise & Shine, with further new music and live dates revealed over the coming months.