Los Blancos share first taste from highly-anticipated third album

Nation Cymru staff

Los Blancos returned this week with ‘Olew’r Olewydd’, the first taste of their forthcoming third album and a snapshot of a band approaching ten years together.

For almost a decade, the Carmarthenshire five-piece have been one of the defining voices in modern Welsh alternative music, building a sound from slacker rock, surf, punk, shoegaze and country that has always felt unmistakably their own.

Their debut album Sbwriel Gwyn was nominated for the Welsh Music Prize, Llond Llaw was shortlisted for Welsh-language Album of the Year, and in 2019 they received the Welsh Music Prize Triskell Award in recognition of their originality and impact.

After their last record, Los Blancos hit a wall. Burnt out, they stepped away and gave themselves time to remember why they started making music together in the first place.

‘Olew’r Olewydd’ was the early demo that brought that feeling back. The reaction between the five of them was immediate: this is the sound.

Translating as ‘Olive Oil’, the track might be the clearest expression yet of the Los Blancos slacker ethos. It is loose, instinctive and slightly off-kilter, built around a loping groove, wiry guitars and flashes of early Beck.

There is still the spirit of Pavement, Pixies, The Velvet Underground and Neil Young in there, but it feels less like a collection of influences and more like Los Blancos simply sounding like themselves.

Lyrically, guitarist Cian turns his attention to the easy habit of observing other people’s lives from a distance, before acknowledging his own imperfections and questioning how much any of us really have figured out. There is a dry humour and self-awareness at the heart of the song, coupled with a resistance to modern hustle culture, self-optimisation and the constant pressure to always be doing more.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Libertino (@libertinorecs)

The wider record was produced by the band themselves under the guidance of drummer Emyr Siôn, who also recorded ‘Olew’r Olewydd’. The band have deliberately kept the record loose and immediate, capturing the chemistry of five friends who have spent almost a decade making music together.

In that sense, this feels like Los Blancos’ own Basement Tapes or Music From Big Pink moment. Not because it sounds like either record, but because it captures a band at a particular point in its life, stripping everything back to friendship, songs and the chemistry they have spent a decade building.

Immediate, instinctive and quintessentially Los Blancos, ‘Olew Olewydd’ captures a band rediscovering the joy of playing together and sounding completely like themselves.

Follow Los Blancos on Instagram for news on tours and the upcoming album and listen to their entire discography on Spotify and all other platforms.

---

Get more trusted Welsh news

Choose Nation.Cymru as a preferred source in Google News to see more of our journalism.