Gruff Rhys: Whale Trail

Gruff Rhys has spent decades making music that doesn’t fit anywhere, which is probably why it fits with me. Whether he’s layering Welsh folk against electronic noise in Super Furry Animals or chasing some half-baked conceptual tangent solo, there’s always this sense that he’s following something only he can hear. Whale Trail carries that impulse—a project that sounds like watching someone work through obsessions in real time, less concerned with the destination than with what gets discovered along the way. It’s the kind of thing that requires patience to sit with, but if you’re the type who finds beauty in the ungainly and the unresolved, there’s something worth hearing here.