Gruff Rhys is a songwriter and musician from Wales who has consistently explored the potential of the song as an opportunity for wider cultural chaos. Starting out as a teenage songwriter in fuzzy Welsh language outlaws Ffa Coffi Pawb he then formed Super Furry Animals – a band able to achieve that rarest of mixes, artistic adventure with popular devotion on a global scale.
As half of electro duo Neon Neon, Rhys has documented the lives of maverick car maker John DeLorean and Italian activist and publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in hi-concept widescreen biographical albums and shows.
His twenty-year solo career has seen him follow a variety of musical and thematic paths that combine melodic richness & intricate guitar playing subverted by questioning lyrics and wordplay. Over the past decade, he’s seen his Candylion album adapted into a successful stage play and his 2014 album American Interior was conceived jointly as a feature film and book. He has conceived and soundtracked multiple films, most recently 2022’s The Almond and the Seahorse starring Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg. His seventh and most recent solo album released by Rough Trade Records, Seeking New Gods, became his most commercially successful solo album yet reaching the top 10 in the UK charts.
2022 saw his collaborations with Tuareg band Imarhan released on their LP Aboogi and 2023 saw the release of the Gruff Rhys produced album Careful of Your Keepers by This is the Kit. He is currently working on a soundtrack for the stage play of Oliver Jeffers’s book Lost and Found for Manchester’s new arts venue Factory International.
Whether through his music, collaborations, or his multimedia projects, Rhys continues to inspire audiences worldwide with his boundless creativity and unwavering commitment to artistic exploration through the medium of song.
